


Field Trip!

by rosejug



Category: Pocket Monsters | Pokemon (Main Video Game Series), Pocket Monsters | Pokemon - All Media Types
Genre: Body Horror, Drama, Friendship, Humor, OCs with Pokémon as a story conduit basically, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Transformation
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-26
Updated: 2020-05-26
Packaged: 2021-02-28 16:35:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 13
Words: 42,876
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23330275
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosejug/pseuds/rosejug
Summary: Six teenage classmates are thrown into a lonely, alien dimension after a field trip goes wrong, and with new bodies to boot! They’ll have to rely on each other and Pokémon abilities if they want to make it back home, and to humanity.
Kudos: 10





	1. No Normal, Chapter 1 (Micheal)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a story I’ve meant to write for a long time. Many different versions bounced around in my head as a teen, so I sat down numerous times to try my hand at writing. After many attempts that never saw their Chapter 2, this one that I started recently finally gets past the first upload. Hopefully it sticks the landing and gets to the end too. To twelve year old me: it’s done, so buckle in, you scrub

It’s not every day people get to experience adventures. The most we high school students usually got was a run against time to get back to class after an extra-long line at the nearby Dairy Queen for lunch. With all the homework, extracurriculars, hormones, and drama, life was complicated, yet repetitive all at the same time. That’s why a school bus taking our class to a historical military fort was somehow a huge occasion in my mind.

Our chatter must’ve been heard by other cars miles off from us. No one could help it: thirty sophomores finally free from schoolwork for a while were as volatile and immature as they could be. We might as well have been kindergarteners fed outrageous amounts of sugar; our brains were just as fried anyway. 

The bus rolled along old dirt roads and new pavement alike, the driver (and our substitute history teacher), Mr Henry, working his hardest to get us out of the marshlands our city was built upon. Well, I guessed he just wanted to get us to and back from the fort as fast as he could so we all wouldn’t come back after school hours. Roads in November were treacherous enough as is.

“Hey, everyone, you’re technically still in class! I’m going to ask you keep it down!”

We were a bit quieter, murmurs traveling through the bus nonetheless. Even from my seat around the middle, I could see Mr Henry heaving a sigh against the steering wheel.

“Hey, Micheal, what’s up?”

Kieran, a kid in my class, was right in front of me, leaning on the back of his seat. He was a weird guy with black hair, and always wore a hoodie with some nerdy t-shirt underneath. He was also one of those buddies I wouldn’t have made outside of class, what with me being pretty quiet and him the massive gamer... but now that the friendship was set, neither of us were complaining.

“Wanna hang out this weekend? Guardians of the Galaxy went up on Netflix,” He said, pushing through my lack of a response.

I thought a bit. “Nah, exam season’s coming up. My parents are making me study, and believe me, I need it.”

“I’d believe you if you ever had low grades,” he smiled.

“Yeah,” I chuckled. “But I’ve got to beat Chloe somehow, right?”

“Did you hear she got 100% on the last spelling test?” 

“Did you hear Julia’s adopted?” Said Lola, a girl from the seat behind me. She was... an odd person. She had black hair with purple streaks, and her closet seemed to be composed entirely of ripped jeans and edgy band shirts. She also doodled a lot in class and was fairly good, don’t get me wrong- but the drawings themselves tended to have a lot of wolves and blood in them. So I kept away.

“What does that have to do with anything?” I asked.

“I don’t know, I thought we were sharing rumours.” Lola shrugged.

“What’s so bad about being adopted?” And that was Chloe popping up at Lola’s side. Apparently she shared the same seat as her on this ride. Chloe was the youngest in the class because she’d skipped a grade, but her aforementioned test scores sure didn’t show it. She had poofy, curly hair, and had glasses- like me- but she stuck to flashier wardrobe colours.

“You were behind us the whole time?” I blanched.

“Well, yeah,” Chloe said, returning a bashful smile. “You guys weren’t saying anything bad, and... I did get a 100.”

With that, she stuck her tongue out, and I could see Lola and Kieran rolling their eyes. The girl sitting beside me, Gab, was leaning on the bus window. I didn’t know if she was spaced out or just didn’t want part of the conversation, but either way, she wasn’t talking at the moment.

“Show-off,” Lola groaned at Chloe’s response. 

“You know, I could just ask Julia if she’s adopted,” Kieran said, changing the subject.

We didn’t stay on the topic for long, though, because that ended up being the last normal thing I would hear for a while. Someone from the front of the bus let out an exclamation at the perfect moment to interrupt.

“What is _that_?”

Everyone on the bus suddenly glued themselves to the windows, eyes toward the road. Kieran tried to maneuver his way to his window, but his seat-mate, Valérie, was a lot taller than him and kept him at bay. It didn’t help that her baggy plaid shirt blocked additional sight from the side.

“Oh my god...” they both let out, him in annoyance and her with awe.

Through my window, Gab and I saw the area in front of us split and tear itself apart, leaving nothing but eerie white light in its wake. It was as if someone was cutting through air like a knife through fabric. Some flickers of light were falling all around the road, extinguishing themselves with a weird, square-shaped dissolving effect. I thought it was snow at first, but then I realized the squares were very familiar.

“Wait, are those _pixels_?” I asked to no one in particular.

“What the hell?” Lola gripped her seat, cackling despite the urgency.

Then, the bus braked to a halt, wheels screeching against the pavement. I was grateful for the lack of slippery ice that would’ve propelled us even a bit closer. The tear was still a couple dozen meters away, but it was catching up, its cracks ripping through the ground as though it were wet tissue.

“Ok, kids, hang on!” Mr Henry yelled, starting to turn the bus around on a thankfully empty road.

 _Took him long enough_! I thought, but even before the light, he’d looked tired and stressed.

We tore through some grass to get back on the pavement, and I felt a grip on my arm. It was Gab, looking pale and embarrassed.

“These things need seatbelts,” she mumbled, hand covering her mouth.

Behind me, I heard a piercing shriek as the bus’s back was torn to shreds, the gas strangely still working. I stared ahead, hoping somehow that it’d protect me from the light, like a child looking away from the monster in the closet. But the cries from the others were soon drowned out and Gab’s arm was wrenched away.

The next thing I knew, I was yanked backwards, thrust into a world of swirling light and deafening wind. It felt like a black hole was sucking me in, yet there was still light everywhere. I couldn’t feel or see any form of solid ground, and after a couple yells, I determined this was too long to be vertigo. I resigned to letting it pass, but it was uncomfortable, and I still panicked.

I was twisted and jerked around for what seemed like hours, still blinded and airborne. All of my body felt numb. When I was younger, I’d read in astronomy books that a wormhole stretched you out like spaghetti because of how dense its black hole component was. That’s what I assumed was taking place. Well, what else could’ve been happening? It could’ve passed as a dream if it didn’t last this vividly long. One dark part of my mind favoured the ‘you’re in a coma’ theory. Darker parts had even bleaker thoughts.

_Is this what it feels like to die?_

Almost as soon as the thought crossed my mind, the roaring of the wind suddenly stopped, and my feet touched the ground again. I immediately gasped and fell down on my side. The sensation came as a jolt, like when you’re almost asleep and suddenly realize you’re in your bed. Still lying on the ground, I took in deep yet shaky breaths.

It might’ve been a relief to be free from the pull, but I was sore and disoriented from all the endless tossing and turning. Everything was slowly but surely starting to come back in... and to hurt.

_Am I on the bus?_

It took a whole minute before I could open my eyes and look around. Was this shock? I didn’t know enough about medical stuff to be sure... Ironically, my dad’s a doctor. Ugh, where’d the family smarts go?

I finally got my eyes to focus on something, both sight and breathing steadying.

I was in some type of cave, mostly gray in colour and rough to the touch. I couldn’t see any direct exit, just bioluminescent mushrooms lighting the way through an eerie corridor. They were on the border of the walls, growing through every available nook and cranny.

“Those things are everywhere,” I mumbled to myself, closing my eyes and focusing on sitting up. I was reassured that I could formulate a sentence and see well, but something still felt off. I slid my tongue against the back of my teeth, and found them to be... pointier. Come to think of it, my eyesight was a lot sharper as well! I could see a very detailed picture of the furthest mushrooms in my sight, should I wish to concentrate on them. What was going on here?

_Shock?_

_No, this is something else. Try to think of what else it could be. Hallucinations... they come from what?_

_Shock?_

_Oh my god, your dad’s a doctor. You should know more. Stop it._

I entertained the idea of a very vivid dream. Everything was so clear... so clear that it might surpass real life. So many confusing messages and input filled my brain. I really didn’t know what was going on.

I finally managed to sit up, but I had to use my arms to do it. Even those felt awkward, and they wouldn’t go far horizontally. It was like my shoulders were locked. Great, now I could add ‘dislocation’ to the list of things wrong with me at the moment. With my heart in my throat, I braced myself and looked down to assess the damage.

But what I saw made me jump for a different reason. In my sight, where touch and perspective told me a hand should be, was a beige paw. 

I felt a pit in my gut, gaping yet filled with anxiety. I looked to the rest of myself and found black fur covering all of my body except for the beige paws and... tail tip. Yeah, _tail_ tip. This day just did not intend on giving up on its goal of surprising me. 

Not to mention, when I took in the size of the mushrooms compared to how tall I was when sitting up, I must’ve been the size of a house cat.

I tried to deny it, but my brain had done enough of that today. With everything feeling so alien, and looking so strange, there seemed to be one explanation.

That was me, and all logic had gone out the window.

What did this mean? Again, I would’ve written this off as a dream if every movement didn’t make me feel so sore! Had I gone crazy, then? Had I snapped from homework? From the crushing pressure of high school? From... well, I didn’t have any actual trauma, what else was there? 

I didn’t yell or jump around, but I didn’t get up calmly either. I started shaking despite myself, terrified in place. The pit in my gut grew bigger than ever, and I spaced out, mumbling to myself.

“I died on the bus. That’s it.” I croaked, trying to bring my palm to my head but only managing the back of a front paw. 

“Oh my god...”

Even though those were my thoughts, that wasn’t my voice. I’d heard someone else from a corner of the cave. Hopefully, it was someone who could bring me back to reality.

“An actual Litleo!”

An actual... what? It didn’t matter. What mattered was that someone else was here, and that their voice was somehow... familiar to me. That, and it was fairly chipper, which could be a good sign.

I looked for the source of the sound, but was faced with the same scenery as before. That is, before my eyes fell on a weird yellow shell leaning on the wall. It was about my current size (embarrassingly) and the shape of a lazily filed down pine cone. I was going to look away for signs of an actual human instead, but then, the shell’s eyes met mine. Yeah, it had _eyes_. I then decided it was worth looking at.

“What are you?” I blurted out. 

The shell scoffed at me. I realized it didn’t have a mouth- how could I hear it so clearly? 

“I’m a human!” It said.

Then it slid off the wall and fell over. 

It struggled, but couldn’t do as much as roll over. Luckily enough for it, it was already facing me. And luckily for me, I finally placed the voice.

“Kieran?” I asked.

The shell- Kieran- looked shocked. “How do you know my name?”

“It’s me, Micheal.”

Kieran gulped, and his eyes darted around the area, seemingly taking in his surroundings as I did. Finally, he asked:

“Micheal... what am I?”

“... You’re a cocoon.”

He looked really panicked... for a second. “Green? Tell me I’m not green.”

“No... you’re yellow,” I said, arching an eyebrow. Did it make any difference?

“Okay, at least it’s not going for Butterfree.”

“... What?”

“Small blessing, Micheal,” he sighed.

He seemed satisfied with his joke of an answer, but I had grown even more confused. I leaned in, it being the only thing I could do at the moment that could get me closer to him. “Kieran, what the hell is going on?”

“We’re Pokémon, and I’ll wake up in a few minutes.”

I sighed. Pokémon. That’s what we were. I suddenly remembered seeing something not unlike Kieran’s current form in my old Pokémon Red copy, but the last time I’d played could’ve been a decade ago. Even if a part of me was glad someone among us knew what we were, the entire rest was devoted to shock and pain. That contrast rendered the sum of me numb.

“Not a dream,” I shuddered.

“It might be a nightmare, actually. You know you _can_ feel pain in those, right?”

Ignoring the past statement and Kieran’s following dream tirade, I tried to get up again. I managed a makeshift squat, sitting upright on my haunches with my two feet planted on the ground. I had to force my head to keep looking forward when it wanted to spring toward the ceiling. I tried a step in Kieran’s direction, only for my heel to very uncomfortably scrape the floor. I winced, and was interrupted by my friend-turned-immobile-cocoon. 

“Dude, no, you’re doing it wrong,” Kieran called from his spot. He was still lying on his side next to the wall.

“What?”

He rolled his eyes at me like I’d just asked him what 1+1 added to. “Your entire foot is on the ground. Cats walk on their toes.”

Cats. Oh, joy. Squinting, I lowered myself to all fours and stood up, this time on my toes.The motion, while being alien, did feel a lot more physically comfortable. I slowly (and very awkwardly) started to walk around.

“So is that what I am? A cat thing?” I asked Kieran.

“Actually, you’re a Litleo, it’s kind of a fire lion?” He answered, his eyes following me around the cave as I made shaky, small steps.

“Ah. One of the newer ones?” A casual tone had just started to take over.

“Came out five years ago, actually. Hey, can you pick me up or something? I... can’t do it,” he said, his voice trailing off after the last phrase. It was then I realized that whatever I was facing, not even being able to move while finding everything out would be a thousand times worse. I walked over to him, my tail dragging on the ground. I’d have to get a handle on that later. While I managed to prop him up against the wall, I also had him lean on my head and shoulder- just in case. The shell was hard, and even through my fur I could tell it had a texture akin to thick plastic.

“Thanks,” he sighed.

“How can you be so calm about this?” I asked, still trying to find a comfortable position myself.

“I’m not- uh,” he recomposed himself, “look, this beats dying in that vortex any day. Maybe it beats next Friday’s history test too, eh?”

All Kieran got from me was a deadpan look. Had he not been thrown into the portal as violently as I had? I turned my eyes to my surroundings once again.

The cave we were in was nothing but gloomy upon second inspection. The blue-green light, while bright, painted the craggy walls with a cold appearance. Other than our voices and faint subsequent echoes, it was deadly quiet. The far-off sound of a droplet of water caught me off guard. 

“Where do you think we are?” I whispered.

“Somewhere in the Pokémon world?”

I shrugged. “That makes some sense, but why?”

I knew Kieran tried to return the shrug, but I just heard a grunt in response. We stayed there for a while, just processing. It was nice to have one other person thrown into this. 


	2. No Normal, Chapter 2 (Micheal)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As Micheal and Kieran acclimate to their surroundings, familiar faces show up. The adventure gradually turns into a group project.

What were so far the longest minutes of my life passed, the quiet of the cave seeping into the air as much as the cold dampness. I would’ve tried to think up a way to transport Kieran with minimal dexterity if my mind wasn’t still buffering. Hey, I did say it had only been minutes! I could process until something else was thrown at us.

Then, a sound jolted us apart. Kieran fell to the floor again with a thud, but seemed to shrug it off as he looked back up to me. His gaze reflected my own hope. 

What we’d heard was a voice!... Or, to be specific, a long string of swears. It was on the verge of becoming a new vocabulary lesson, I had to admit. Kieran remained on the floor as I, wobbly as could be, padded toward the sound of the voice. 

“Dude,” he whined, “bring me with you.”

I sighed. “I won’t forget you here, don’t worry. There might even be a Pokémon over there that, you know, has hands.”

“That’s optimistic,” he grumbled, but stayed put.

The cave we were in was separated into a chamber and a hallway. Hopefully there would be more chambers lining that hallway (and maybe even a way to the surface!) or else all that was left past my field of vision was a thin, long corridor leading to endless claustrophobia. At least it looked well-lit.

As I entered the hallway portion of our environment, I realized there was another passage to my right. A labyrinth? Great. There were still faint echoes bouncing off that direction, so I started making the turn.

What I didn’t expect was sudden movement down the path I’d opted _not_ to take. Something had rounded the corner and skidded to a halt entering the hall, and my head jerked toward it on instinct.

It was a tall figure— a quadruped that looked like some weird white dog with a misshapen lion’s mane around its neck and chest. It also sported a blade (or was it a horn?) sticking out of its head. It was so tall, and seeing something at least twice my size moving this fast made my heart jump.

I yelped, losing balance and falling to the ground at the sight. A snort and cackle rang through the area, and I recognized the cadence from earlier that day. Flushing away my embarrassment, I rolled onto my belly and got back to standing up from there.

“Hey... Lola,” I tested. 

The weird dog nodded, her grin visible from my position some dozens of meters away. She pointed a claw at me, leaning awkwardly to the left now that her front right paw was occupied.

“Micheal,” she guessed, speaking as nonchalantly as she would playing a trivia game at home.

“Yeah it’s me,” I nodded. 

“What is she?” Kieran called from his spot. 

“You know what? I’ll let you be the judge of that,” I answered. As previously stated, I knew next to no Pokémon. “Lola, can you come over here?”

And I ended back up in the room with Kieran. I hoped that, with Lola’s help, we could hoist him onto her back. She walked unsteadily toward me, and I noticed her head leaning to the side because of that horn’s weight. She seemed to still be adjusting to her new body, but her speech pattern didn’t reflect that in the slightest. Was I seriously the only one this shocked to find out they weren’t human?

“No way, you got Absol?” Groaned Kieran as she entered the chamber a minute later.

“Absol?” Lola asked. Now that she was inches from me, I noticed red eyes sparking with curiosity.

“Pokémon,” I said, enunciating a bit too much. I needed a reaction out of this. “We are Pokémon right now.”

She squinted at that. “Pokémon,” she repeated, an ounce of skepticism briefly in her voice, before vanishing entirely when she turned to Kieran. “Should’ve guessed. So I got a good one?”

“Yeah, you did,” Kieran fumed. 

“Hey, Gab!” She yelled down the hall. “I found more people.”

Apparently our aforementioned classmate had been following close behind, and I mentally slapped myself for not noticing. What looked like a flying squirrel around half my size waddled over to us, head down and hands fidgeting together. As she got closer, I noticed yellow cheek pouches that were reminiscent of a Pikachu. Sure, I had fallen off the Pokémon train a long time ago, but some things are unmistakeable.

“I’m Gab,” she said, sitting down next to us. I could’ve guessed that one with how quiet she’d been.

“See? We have a Pikachu,” Lola said, gesturing to Gab.

“Emolga,” Kieran corrected.

“Gesundheit.”

Gab’s eyes widened when she saw him. “Do you need help?” She mumbled.

As the one member of the group who had hands, she grabbed him and held him up. She had no hopes of actually carrying him though; he was at least half a foot taller than her.

“Were you guys the ones swearing up a storm a minute ago?” I asked. I had a hard time believing soft-spoken Gab was the culprit, but she had the incentive. However, she wasn’t the one to answer.

“I thought it was you two,” Lola answered, looking to Gab with that hint of concern in her eyes, gone as fast as it had appeared when she stopped to lean on the wall.

As if on cue, the as of now interrupted string of incredibly inventive profanities reprised. If the tone before had been anger, this was urgency and panic. I heard another softer voice trying to talk the first down, but it only got louder and louder. 

It took me a second too long to realize that it was also getting closer.

There was only one way I could describe the Pokémon barreling into the room: a blue goblin that somehow got its hands on armour. It was weird, and was still yelling profusely. It’d made it to the back of the room without seeing us, but now that it’d reached a dead end we were blocking off its exit. After a few quick glances from side to side, it finally shut up and put its fists up defensively. 

“Meditite,” I heard Kieran mumble. That must’ve been the Pokémon’s species name, but to me, there was no need to guess her identity. If this was a student, there was only one I knew who was ready to fight at any second. 

_Valérie_.

I wish I could say we figured out it was only another student following her, but the haste she’d entered the room with was insanely contagious. We all turned to the other echoing call that came from down the hall. The fur on my neck bristled, a brand new feeling I was not in the mood to deal with on top of the panic.

I expected the other voice’s owner to bolt at us at full speed, but I didn’t expect it to fly above us in a blur, and then begin to circle us.

“It’s a bird, get it away! Get it away!” Kieran shrieked.

If you’ve ever seen your family react to a bat flying into the kitchen, you’ve seen how that room erupted at that exact moment. People tripped all over, everyone screamed bloody murder, the works. It is hilarious upon looking back, but it took a long time for me to laugh at it.

The new arrival landed in a less crowded area. She was a tiny blue bird with very cloud-like wings, which she raised in an attempt to signal us to stop screaming. We quickly calmed down when registering just how downright minuscule she was.

“It’s me! I’m Chloe!” She chirped.

Valérie finally lowered her fists, her voice tired but firm. “Chloe? What happened to you?”

“Same thing as all of us, apparently,” I answered, to Valérie’s quizzical look. “Welcome to the Pokémon club.”

Valérie’s face scrunched up as she put two and two together, her eyes darting around the room before stopping on herself. She stared at her strange, blue, three-fingered hands and ended up throwing them over her droplet-shaped head. “What the absolute hell?”

Finally an appropriate reaction!

Chloe hopped to Valérie, keeping her wings tucked in. “It’s okay, we’re all here with you.”

Valérie lowered her arms to a more casual position and sighed. “I know that, but why? Why us? Why this? Why _Pokémon_ of all things? I don’t even play that!”

“We don’t know either,” I quickly added, satisfied that concern was back on the table, but not wanting her to explode again. I looked around to the rest of the group. “Any theories?”

Silence once again fell upon our circle.

“Well, obviously, it has to do with whatever was going on outside the bus,” Kieran said, still propped up by Gab, who simply nodded in agreement.

“Probably,” said Chloe. “Maybe that light tunnel was a portal that took us to the Pokémon world?”

Valérie rolled her eyes, getting irritated against better judgement. She muttered another curse as she brought her hand to her forehead. 

“That’s a good possibility,” I said. “But where are the actual Pokémon?”

Kieran spoke up. “We’ve been in a cave for ten minutes. They’re probably outside.”

“You’d think we’d have heard _something_ other than us so far, though.”

“I cracked it. Purgatory! We’re in purgatory,” Lola pitched in.

We all turned to her, and she just returned a smirk. She was still leaning on the wall, her horn weighing on it as well. I was sure the thought crossed all our minds at the time, but if _she_ was taking everything as a joke, including darker topics that shouldn’t be brought up, it might prove to be annoying later on. Just ‘annoying’ would be the better scenario.

“Actually, who cares about that right now?” Valérie asked. Even though she’d brought it up, any thought of further discussion was abruptly cut off by Lola’s remark. “Wherever we are, we should be focusing on getting water, food, and shelter. Let’s get a move on.”

When I’d thought only Valérie was always ready to fight, it wasn’t without reason. I’d had karate classes with her. The set of skills mixed with her steadfast personality made her a potentially ruthless survivalist. If she— and all of us— could grasp the now-reality of Pokémon, we were in good hands. 

“Wait!” Gab said. I realized then that she’d clearly been struggling with holding Kieran upright. She’d started pushing her own weight against him just to counteract the force of gravity. Kieran also must’ve noticed, his eyes fixed toward the ceiling in exasperation. It’s mean to say, but the sight of that tiny flying squirrel trying her damnedest to not let a huge yellow cocoon fall was pretty laughable.

Gab didn’t say much more, but she didn’t need to. Valérie just went over to the two of them and picked Kieran up like it was nothing, letting Gab fall to the floor.

“Okay, let’s go.”

With that, our ragtag group of shocked human-turned-Pokémon left the premises and headed off into the cave halls.

* * *

The walk following our ‘landing’ was surprisingly quiet. I guess that it was a result of giving ourselves a task while still grappling with the current situation. Maybe the former overshadowed the latter.

The hallway was about the same size throughout the trek, the lighting being mostly even as well. When we’d started walking, the unanimous decision was to take the tunnel that leaned upward, since that upped our chances of getting to the surface. It tired us faster, I’m sure, but at least we had a strong will to go with it. The blue glow coating the walls was eerie at first, but was starting to look... cool. Never in my life did I think I’d be stuck in this kind of scenery. Had I ever even gone into a cave? Were there stalagmites somewhere in here? Bats?

How much air was down here? 

_And... time to change the subject!_

“So... how’s everyone’s day?” I blurted out.

Everyone stopped, and, needless to say, I got some weird looks. Lola chuckled, Gab glanced away, Chloe looked from face to face as if she actually wanted to hear an answer, and Valérie rolled her eyes and shrugged... which only left Kieran.

He was the first to talk after the deafening silence. “It’s going fine. Everything’s chill. I’m fine. I’m cool.”

“Oh yeah, Mr ‘it’s a bird! Death has come for us all!’” Lola snickered, her fangs showing off a certain glint. 

“ _Hey_! You freaked out too,” Kieran grumbled. “So did Valérie.”

“It was the _situation_ I was fleeing from, thank you very much,” Valérie said, holding him up to her face. “It seemed like the right option at the time.”

“I didn’t think Swablu would be that scary”, Chloe mumbled, hopping about our path. She’d kept her wings tucked in for the entire duration of the walk.

“You aren’t,” reassured Gab. 

Come to think of it, she had wings as well; they’d just been tucked in by default because she kept her arms down. It was debatable if they even counted as wings, actually, same as if a flying squirrel could even technically fly. What was it Kieran called her? Emo-something?

I was snapped out of my thoughts by an exclamation from Chloe, followed by a fluttering of wings.

“Oh my gosh!”

In our path was a dark green bush filled with big, blue fruit. Chloe flew to it, like a bullet to some unlucky prey. She landed on a branch, her weight barely lowering it, and chomped down on one of the blue berries. Some pieces she’d bitten off fell to the floor, but she didn’t seem to care. Honestly, she seemed like she’d just gone to heaven, the branch she’d landed on shaking with her bounces.

“You doing okay there?” Valérie asked hesitantly. “I don’t know that kind of fruit. Ugh, is it a Pokémon thing?”

Kieran squinted, getting a better look from his still position. “Yeah, they’re-“

“They’re Oran berries! They heal you!” Chloe chirped, beak full of fruit. “I’ve always wondered how they tasted, and they’re _good_!”

With no more than a collective shrug, the rest of us joined in, since we hadn’t eaten since lunch. Well, that and the hope for a ham and cheese sandwich was now as far away as the actual thing. The fruit was tart, kind of like an orange but with a sour aftertaste. It was weird, because the texture resembled that of a blueberry, but with a thicker peel. It was really juicy too. I almost felt like I didn’t need water after starting one. Overall, it was an okay fruit, just different than what I was used to. Hopefully, it wouldn’t be the default for long. Just going through one berry was probably going to make me feel full anyway.

My focus eventually wandered to a puddle near the bush. I guess I knew what I was, but seeing that fire lion cub on the other side of the mirror, staring back at me... it was something. The others soon joined me near the small puddle.

“What even is this thing?” Valérie asked, dumbfounded. She patted the swirls that were where her ears used to be.

“It’s you,” smirked Lola. “Some improvement on the previous model, I’d say.”

“ _Very_ _funny_. I meant: what were the designers thinking? My head’s an onion.”

“There might not be designers, for all we know”, Kieran stated, gaining a deep, faraway look in his eye. “You think this is actually where it all came from? A world where Pokémon exist?”

“Or maybe you’re high,” Lola answered.

“ _You’re_ high.”

“Language,” Chloe warned, before jumping to the right side of the bush. “Hey, what’s that?”

Our eyes were drawn to a splash of yellow against the gray wall, hidden by the shadows, but just noticeable. Gab padded over to the object and pulled it out, laying it on the dry, lit ground for us all to see. She’d dropped it as silently as anything else she did, but the rest of us were near cacophonous in our reactions.

It was a note. An old, worn, faded note, but one nonetheless. I didn’t need to get closer, as my eyes could now easily focus on words without glasses. It read:

_‘I have not found this land’s beast yet. It seems empty, but I have planted some seeds in the meantime. They sprout fast, so I shall have some ready soon! :)”_

“What?” Kieran said, before most of us had finished reading. “Why’d they sign with a smiley face?”

“Who cares?” Valérie countered. “I’m more concerned about ‘this land’s beast’.”

I joined in. “Well, I’d like to focus on the fact that someone else was here—“

“... is it a Pokémon thing?” Valérie cut me off, to Chloe’s fervent head shaking.

I sighed. “This place has been empty so far except for us. We’re not the first ones here, but whoever wrote this could also be outside, or dead. And if there’s a monster in the cave...“

“ _We’re_ monsters in a cave,” said Kieran.

“... we have to get out, then,” I said though gritted teeth. 

“Yeah?” Went Lola, leaning on the wall again. “It clearly says they haven’t found the monster yet. There could just not be one.”

Everyone except for her exchanged some skeptical looks. Yes, we’d been exploring this place for over a few hours, but dark corridors did not exactly inspire a cozy atmosphere, or at least insinuate that nothing would reach out of the shadows and get us. As silly as it sounded, the monster remained on the table. 

“We have to keep going,” I announced, getting up and leaving my half-eaten berry on the spot.

Valérie heartily joined in, picking up Kieran as she practically ran to me. Chloe flew up to Lola’s head, which she in turn responded to by shaking her off. Chloe hopped about, making her way to the trail with her. The last remaining member was Gab, who picked up the note and carefully folded it. 

With that done, we set out.

* * *

... It didn’t really matter, because we barely got ten minutes before we had to stop again.

Suddenly, everything went dark, to everyone’s surprised shrieks. Yeah, mine too. Our surroundings had turned pitch black in a split second. I gathered my bearings.

“We’re all in high school, right?” I asked, deadpan. I got weak chuckles as the sole response. 

_Between that, the note, and the Chloe incident..._

I didn’t get time to test out my improved night vision. I heard a crackle of electricity to my right; something akin to a lightbulb starting up in an old office. Right when I turned to see what made the sound, I had to squint and recoil away. There was a new light source. It was Gab, and her new stark white light came to much contrast to the sudden dark.

“How are you doing that?” I asked, flabbergasted.

“You gotta crack her like a glow stick,” went Lola.

“I...” through my squinting eyes, Gab looked just as surprised as the rest of us. “I thought Emolga might know Flash, so I tried it.”

Of course! If we were Pokémon, we could know moves. Why had it taken me this long to figure that no-brainer out?

 _Buddy, you should maybe tolerate missing some things when it’s your first day being ripped away from your body_.

“So you know Pokémon,” Chloe realized, before gasping. “You have to show me how to do that!”

“I-I’m not sure if you can-“

“Sweet,” Kieran sighed from the ground. His previous yell might’ve been from Valérie dropping him as opposed to the sudden dark. “Another person who won’t need a briefing.”

Maybe Gab didn’t, but judging from the looks I exchanged with Valérie and Lola, the three of us would _definitely_ need a briefing. Probably an hour-long one.

It didn’t take long to notice that the lights had gone out because the mushrooms had dimmed.

We stuck around the same corner of the room for a while, just to see if the lights would go back up.

“Wait, how long has it been since we came here?” I asked, breaking the silence. 

In the meantime, Valérie had managed to pick Kieran back up. She shrugged. “I don’t know about everyone, but it’s just been a couple hours with you guys. I landed maybe a couple minutes before sprinting off.”

“Same for me,” Chloe added. “Does the portal ride count, though? That has to add another hour.”

A few murmurs of agreement passed around the group, and I put forward my theory. “So, we left school at lunch, and stayed here long enough for the sun to set back home, right? You think there might be an equivalent here?”

“The dungeon’s got its own day-night cycle,” Gab realized.

“Ew, why call it a dungeon?” Valérie asked.

Chloe cut through Gab’s stammer of a response. “It’s a video game thing.”

Great. Even the day-night cycle couldn’t be normal here. I stared down the now pitch-black corridor. As I looked around, I realized none of us wanted to keep going. Be it because of Chloe’s beak consistently pointing toward the ground or Valérie’s arms sluggishly holding up Kieran, I could see we were all tired. No one else wanted to admit it, though.

“Should we break for the night?” I asked slowly, to everyone’s quiet nods.

Chloe was the first to doze off, practically doing so on the spot. Valérie promptly placed Kieran on the ground and sat close by. Lola laid down facing the dark hallway we’d been following, in a position that was a movement away from a pounce. Gab leaned on the wall, and extinguished her own light when closing her eyes. As darkness fell again, I found myself on my back, tail swishing against the dusty floor, eyes toward the ceiling.

Needless to say, we hadn’t gotten to the fort. At no time today had I expected Pokémon to suddenly become real. As I stared at the ceiling, only one thought circled my mind.

_On to the next day._


	3. No Normal, Chapter 3 (Micheal)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> More questions are asked, but not many answered. When are these kids getting out?

Throughout the night, all our eyes grew somewhat accustomed to the lack of light, but it was nowhere near total darkness, like it would be in a regular cave with no green-blue glowing mushrooms. Even so, I could tell that my night vision was a lot better than the others’, barring Lola. Her red eyes practically glowed in the darkness— a fact I was sure she would relish in if I told her. It didn’t matter much since she fell asleep pretty fast.

It was a long night, or at least if felt like it. It was one of those where you’d keep waking up, only to fall back asleep nigh instantly because you were barely awake in the first place. I’d had those a couple times after especially stressful study binges. This time in particular, it didn’t help that waking up didn’t convince me I wasn’t dreaming.

The cave was quiet all night as far as I could tell, and without our chatter it stayed that way until the morning. Well, maybe until ten minutes before morning.

“Kieran, what am I again?”

“Litleo,” he groaned. “Fire lion.”

Kieran and I had ended up waking up first. It wasn’t easy to find a comfortable sleeping position as a quadruped (even though Lola seemed to be faring well on her side), and I couldn’t even imagine trying to when you suddenly couldn’t shift between positions by yourself. Anyway, any time was good for a refresher, and I could use a briefing.

“... And Chloe?”

“Swablu.”

“And-“

“Valérie’s a Meditite, Gab’s an Emolga, Lola’s an Absol!” He snapped, and huffed.

He stood still in his corner, his eyes dead tired. Something finally clicked in my brain, and I remembered his species name from faraway Pokémon Red memories.

“Kakuna!” I beamed. “You’re a Kakuna!”

“... Yes,” he mumbled. “Reached far for that one?”

“I played Red when I was five. I know _some_ stuff.”

He responded, making a sound that someone would make while shrugging. You know, if they could shrug. It must’ve been his shorthand for the moment. After that, silence settled back in. _Great_. He was always the one who came to me for conversation during class, but now that there was absolutely nothing else to do, he was quiet?

“... which one’s the one you evolve into?” I asked.

“Beedrill,” Chloe whispered next to us. Apparently she’d woken up sometime during our non-conversation and hopped over. She looked tired but cheerful... which seemed consistent.

“Oh,” I answered. “Which one is that again?”

“You can remember Kakuna, but not _Beedrill_ ,” Kieran said. “The big bee. With the drills.”

“Excuse me if my memories from ten years ago are faded”, I retorted. “During that playthrough, I went for the butterfly _anyway_.” 

“Good choice, Butterfree’s the better one,” Chloe quipped, to Kieran’s somewhat offended gasp.

They started bickering about stats, typing, and things that went way over my head. Eventually, I gave up on trying to follow the debate and decided to observe the dim light of the mushrooms.

Suddenly, a giant shadow pulled over the area. A voice from above me caught me off guard. “Are we going, already?”

I fell over when I tried to jump away, but still managed to swivel around in the direction of the surprise. What met me, of course, were those red eyes and smug grin that Lola bore. I just about died of frustration and embarrassment, my attention now strictly on the scaremonger Absol.

“Wow, two for two,” she chuckled. 

“Don’t sneak up on me like that!”

“I wasn’t trying to. It’s just dark. I guess I _blend in_ ,” she said, with— I swear to _God_ — a mimic of a hair flip with her scythe. She didn’t seem self-aware about it no matter how forced it looked. “Anyway, I’m hungry. Should we get some food?”

With Kieran and Chloe still absorbed into their argument, there was only one choice to pick. Still, Lola wasn’t necessarily someone I wanted to hang out with alone.

“It’s kind of dark out there.”

“I can see fine.”

“Neither of us carry berries back without putting them in our mouth.”

“I can come along,” said Gab. 

_Aaaaand now everyone’s awake_ , I thought while glancing over to where we’d slept for the night. I did find Valérie still lying down close to the wall, so I wasn’t correct.

With our designated Kakuna carrier still asleep, rendering us immobile as a complete group, the three of us left to get the Oran berries.

* * *

The path was dark, unsurprisingly. The twisting corridor didn’t bother me all that much, since we hadn’t found any other opening between our camp and the berries. None of the labyrinth’s danger this morning; only a straight line in the darkness. Though there was some dim light coming from the walls, it was nothing compared to what the mushrooms had produced when we’d first appeared here. Better yet, that portal yesterday was the most light I’d ever seen in my life. Too bad we couldn’t harness it or find the surface, both ways we could properly see where we were going. Come to think, though, Gab had practically turned into a living lamp before we all went to sleep. Said classmate was currently busy holding her hands in front of her. With her being a flying squirrel, her eyesight must’ve been worse than Lola and I’s.

“Why don’t you try lighting up again?” I asked her, hit with the realization that it could make our walk easier.

She started to mumble something in response, but Lola cut her off. “ _I_ see things the same in the dark as the day. We’re fine.”

Gab shrugged and sighed, before her quiet voice finally entered the conversation. “Well, you are a dark type. It would make sense that you have some kind of night vision.”

“Uh, yeah. Cool power for a cool person,” Lola laughed, before flashing a grin.

I rolled my eyes, deciding to look away from the Absol and Emolga. Silence fell again upon our trio, but we were getting close to the Oran berry bush. Making conversation honestly wasn’t my priority. Throughout the stroll, I’d been walking just fine. The hardest part had been waking up and standing, but I was starting to get the hang of walking on all fours. I’d had some amount of practice, after all.

It was then that the reality of the situation hit me again at full force. 

“Oh my god. Pokémon,” I blurted out.

“I _know_ ,” Gab sighed in relief. “This is so weird.”

“Weird doesn’t even cut it!”, I laughed, any tension I’d felt dissipating. “Lola, you’ve been all nonchalant since landing, what’s up with you?”

“Eh, I look cool. Whatever. Reflects my dark inside.”

_Well, someone seems to have spent a long time on Deviantart._

I snorted despite better judgment, but Lola seemed to ignore it. “Oh, hey, we’re here.”

Barely a couple feet away from the bush, the lights suddenly turned back on. I shut my eyes, and was sure Gab and Lola did too. Well, especially Lola, because she’d let out a pained cry. Her excellent night vision had been her downfall.

When my eyes had adjusted, I was greeted with the sight of Lola lying on the ground, dramatically reaching a paw toward Gab and I.

“Go on without me,” she groaned.

“Get up,” I said rolling my eyes. “Those berries aren’t going to bring themselves back.”

She sighed heavily and we went to work, picking out the berries, eating our share, and drinking from the puddle occasionally. Lola and I just grabbed what we could while piling up the rest on Gab. Her size interfered with the amount she could carry, but two small hands were better than none.

Our assembly line continued until yells echoed from down the hall.

“Is something going on?” I asked.

“No, I just think Valérie’s awake,” said Gab.

* * *

Our makeshift camp was mostly the same when we got back. Could we call it a camp if it was only made up of us while sleeping? Anyway, the only difference was, of course, that Valérie was awake. And boy, would that have usually been a difference. With that commanding of a presence, she was what anyone would look up to first, me included.

To my surprise, though, the Meditite’s eyes were closed, her shoulders and chest going up and down with each breath. She was standing up, arms joined together. Not a peep came out of her anymore, except for the sound of inhaling and exhaling. This was as far from her previous method of dealing with being a Pokémon as it could be.

“There we go,” Chloe chirped right next to her. It didn’t take a bird expert to tell that her feathers were still ruffled from Valérie’s freakout earlier. “Deep breaths.”

_Thank God for Chloe._

“Ugh, spare me,” groaned Kieran, who’d just noticed us coming back. He was lying on his side, his back against the wall. “Took you long enough.”

Valérie and Chloe looked up, as Gab dropped the Oran berries she’d brought into a neat pile. She’d put down four, one for each classmate who hadn’t gotten to eat yet. She sat down and partook in a bite of hers, and I grabbed Kieran’s and brought it over to him. He didn’t seem too excited.

“Agh, gross, your drool’s on it.” 

“Get over it,” I replied, sitting down next to him. “I already had mine. Open up-“

I remembered, for the second time since finding Kieran as a Kakuna, that there was an odd design choice pertaining to that Pokémon. There was no visible mouth. 

“Okay, you’re gonna have to help me out here.”

“What?” He asked.

“Where’s your mouth? I mean, how did you eat yesterday—“

I realized something else.

“ _You didn’t eat yesterday_?!”

He squinted at me. “Nope, thanks for caring when that happened.”

I was in full panic mode again, the fur on the back of my neck rising. I rolled the berry closer to his face. “Well, all the more important that you eat now, then!”

“Micheal, I feel fine!” He snapped. “Not the slightest bit hungry! I’m a cocoon, right? Whatever I’ve got going on inside, it’s sorting itself out. Probably already got all the calories I need until Beedrill.”

He huffed and closed his eyes, now opting out of the conversation. I awkwardly rolled the Oran berry back toward myself, unsure of what to do with it. Was Kieran really correct about not needing to eat? It was true that chrysalis and cocoons didn’t need food while in that state, but then again, they weren’t typically the size of a cat and always ready to talk someone’s ear off during math class. Some butterflies didn’t emerge out of their chrysalis for weeks. Could I count on that kind of a timeframe? I also had to consider the Pokémon angle, and all a fictional animal and _universe_ had to entail. If a lion — like what I was currently— could survive off berries and no meat, did that mean that all nutrition laws went out the window to begin with? I knew I wouldn’t find out the answer until we’d learn we’d gone with the wrong decision. And I couldn’t help but think that Kieran also thought of all these things, to varying degrees of anxiety.

I spoke to him again. “You don’t know where it is either, do you?”

“Nope, and I’d rather not think about it, thank you very much.”

“Got it.”

A few minutes later, we were ready to walk again, Lola finishing off the extra berry. I’d felt full after one, but she was the biggest one in the group, so a stronger appetite would be appropriate. With Valérie leading the charge, we left in the direction opposite the bush, Gab picking up the note.

The walk was quiet as we went through the long hallway. We hadn’t taken any turns yet after maybe half an hour. I really thought we’d talk more, especially if this morning was any example, but any attempts to conversation lasted two minutes at best. Valérie in particular had gone from pale to steadfast with nothing in between, and a long time walking didn’t help.

We did eventually reach the end of the path. What awaited us wasn’t an exit, though. It was another chamber. 

The instant we entered the room, my nostrils were assaulted by a foul, musty smell. I blamed it surprisingly quickly on the lion nose being better than my usual one. Lola and Gab’s noses were scrunched up too, so I knew I wasn’t the only one suffering. I was able to push the smell aside to focus on other things, but leaving the room went up on my list of priorities.

In the center of the room was a scarecrow-like dummy, with stray straw sticking out of a torn, tattered sheet. It looked in bad shape, but it was still stuck on a pole and strung up with sturdy-looking rope knots. Whoever had made it knew what they were doing, and even though it had clearly taken a beating, it was standing.

“Woah,” I said.

“Wow, a ceiling,” Kieran sighed sarcastically, Valérie quickly adjusting him so he could see the dummy.

“Kieran,” she groaned. “Shut the salt trap.”

He rolled his eyes. “I’d like to see you react to everyone in your class getting superpowers and you getting stuck as the Kakuna!”

“... Everyone in the class?” Gab asked, essentially voicing my concerns. We were only six teenagers here. We hadn’t heard a peep from anyone other than us.

 _Where_ is _everyone else?_

I didn’t get to ponder it much more because Chloe had flown to another note, this one laid next to the dummy, and then it was a mad scramble to get there as fast as we could. What can I say? We’d become about as starved for guidance as we were for adult supervision. Come to think of it, the two weren’t that different.

‘ _Practice your moves! :)_ ’ read the yellowing page. I’d expected another cryptic message, so I was surprised to end up somewhat _not_ disappointed. 

Obviously, this was some kind of training room. The dummy and the note made that clear. Our mysterious guide had planted berries, clues and training gear, but what they hadn’t was answers. 

“So, who’s gonna hit it first?” Kieran asked.

“What?” I said, snapped out of my thoughts. 

“We’re Pokémon. We have moves. Who’s gonna hit it first?”

After some nervous shuffling, Chloe hopped in the dummy’s direction, went for a running start, and flew onto its ‘shoulder’. Having herself positioned, she started aggressively pecking at it. It looked like head banging from my position, and I was unsure if it was effective on the dummy— let alone if it would deter an actual threat. The smell got worse, and my squinting eyes caught the sight of dust clouds coming out of the spot Chloe kept hitting. This thing— and the note— had been left unattended for a while. 

“Aw, I bet it’s super moldy,” Lola laughed, batting air away from her nose with her paw.

We elected not to practice against this thing in a closed ventilation system, but not before Chloe had the mother of all coughing fits. With her being a bird, maybe she didn’t have the best sense of smell anymore, but choking was easy with however small her lungs were now.

We started to move away, the unsaid agreement of moving along being fulfilled again. 

“No more practice?” Asked Kieran, somewhat disappointed.

Valérie looked down to him.

“I can throw you at it,” she suggested.

“Yeah, okay” Kieran sighed, closing his eyes. “Thanks. Next time, we go for ‘Plan Projectile’.”

We started making our wall down the hall again. “Wait. So what now?”

It was Lola who’d asked the question. She’d dropped her usual demeanour for a look that was somewhat honest. “What are we doing now? We walk some more?”

“Yeah,” Valérie answered. “We need to find the right path.”

“What’s the use?” She asked. 

“It’s the only way to find the exit!” Chloe said.

Lola waited a while before shrugging. “Yeah, sure.”

Something in her tone was ominous, as much as I hated to admit. This didn’t faze Chloe, however. She excitedly flapped her wings, getting some small lift off the ground. She was definitely the fastest to adapt to being a Pokémon.

* * *

We started making our way through a path we hadn’t before. How long did we walk this time? I didn’t know. It was during this walk that I realized that we truly didn’t have any way to measure time other than the lights going out. If they even were to go out again. And, to begin with, was that accurate to an actual day-night cycle? How many hours did we spend in that stupid cave? How many would we continue to?

We reached another fork in the road, this one simply leaving us with the choice of left and right. As Lola started to wander on the right side, she was quickly yelled at by Valérie.

“Woah! What do you think you’re doing?”

Lola looked over her shoulder to face a not-so-happy Meditite. “Walking?”

“I meant: why would you pick that path? It’s sloping down. There’s no way that’s the one to lead us to the surface.”

“Wow, listen to Girl Scout over here.”

“I wasn’t in the Scouts,” Valérie scoffed. “I just have common sense!”

“Uh, common sense would also consider that this one could totally end up going back up, idiot.”

Valérie’s following gasp was something to behold, and I remember wondering right then whether she’d gotten the last of the cave’s oxygen all in one breath. She lowered her head, _fuming_.

Kieran, still carried by her, took that as a massive warning. His black eyes practically bulged out of his head. “Put me down _now_ if you’re gonna try anything.”

She did not hear that as far as I knew, because she marched up to the Absol, the Kakuna still in her arms, and readied herself for the argument. As I looked around me, I just saw Gab sharing my helpless expression. Valérie and Lola were momentarily stopped by Chloe landing in-between them. 

“Woah there! I’m sure we can talk everything out!” She pleaded. “Now’s not the time to fight!”

“I don’t know, maybe we’re friggin’ _Pokémon_ for a reason,” growled Valérie.

“And maybe we’ll find out what that reason is later! Can’t we just take a civil vote? If you two each want a different path, I’m sure we can sort this out without blows being dealt.”

With that and Chloe’s super effective puppy dog eyes (or Swablu eyes?), the situation had somehow been defused. There was just no getting angry at Chloe. While the tension was still there, it didn’t feel like anyone was going to start throwing punches anytime soon. We just needed to handle the rest of the conversation delicately and not argue over cave logistics.

“I’m with Lola though. We’re probably not even underground anyway!” Chloe laughed.

And _there_ was the final nail in the coffin.

The bickering match’s volume now grew to nuke proportions, even Gab throwing her two cents in. I could only watch from the sidelines, trying desperately to help Chloe play peacemaker. _Lord_ , we needed at least the two of us. After dealing with frustration after frustration, maybe this outburst was our only outlet. If we didn’t find any concrete explanation soon, this would keep going until we finally ran out of food and air.

On the wall opposing us, I noticed a thin line of discolouration. That part of the wall was subtly darker than the rest. I stared, mouth agape as I looked from side to side. The stripe ran across the entire wall as far as I could tell. Although faded, it looked artificial enough that someone had to have put it there. Like a trail.

“It looks like...” I mumbled, before yelling out: “Ink!”

I stumbled out of our spot, going in a random direction and keeping my eye on the wall stripe. The fight behind me grew quiet and I heard equally frantic scrambles going into the same direction. Something about the texture on that stripe screamed ink, and that rekindled some hope that there was someone else here. We needed someone to be there.

But again, we didn’t reach them. I probably knew already that we wouldn’t, but finding another dead end with a note planted on the ground was the mother of all letdowns. 

I didn’t need to say anything, or exchange looks with anyone. I only heard slow footsteps around me as I padded closer to the message. It was as worn as anything before, and I unfortunately saw that I’d been right about it being written in the same ink as the stripe.

 _‘No need to fear; there is still one path I have not followed. I’ll mark it as I go. This last task should appear at the end of the path, when I’ve seen everything there is to see here. It’s tricky, but I have been in this kind of a place before_. :)’

“We went the wrong way,” I sighed. “This is the start of the line.”

We’d reached the end of the path before. If all we had to do was reach another end... we’d just have to find where that was. Even if it meant running into that elusive cave monster.

I couldn’t elaborate before the lights dimmed, leaving only a faint glow from the mushrooms. Suddenly, it was ‘night’ again. Gab started glowing seconds later.

“We walk again tomorrow?” I asked, turning back to the group. I received groans from all around. 

We set camp, by which I mean that we individually decided what part of the rocky, dusty floor looked the comfiest, and laid down there. I think we deeply needed to sleep off some steam after something as simple as a fork in the road got us so intensely heated. They say never to go to bed angry, but I say I’d rather get some time away from anger rather than stew in it.

Valérie set Kieran next to me that night. I laid down on my side, paws splayed out in front of me. I’d learned from last night that that was the position that felt the least awkward. I’d slept on my back as a human, so it would still take a lot of getting used to.

Most of the camp was tired and quiet. But not my cocoon friend laying right next to my ear. It was a poorly calculated position on my part.

“Pssst, you think you know any fire moves?” Kieran whispered.

“No?” I answered. Even if I did, I didn’t know how to access them. “Why?”

“Campfire,” he responded.

I turned over to face him. “In a cave? No, man. We’d suffocate.”

“Just a thought”, he laughed, before muttering under his breath. “At least you can probably do something right now.”

I only shrugged in response. What else was there to say? We’d been through a lot of surprises in two days.

I got more and more annoyed by the situation the more I thought about it. There was just too much going on; my senses were constantly overwhelmed, and I had to think without rest. I was plain exhausted, I would be in the morning, and I knew the others would be too. I sighed, and was drawn out from my stupor by a noise from the corner.

“Hey, turn the light off?” Whined Lola, her voice muffled by the ground. Gab rolled her eyes, and then all my surroundings faded away into darkness.


	4. No Normal, Chapter 4 (Micheal)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The last chapter of the first part, though there will be more to come.

Waking up from that short rest was not a good start to the day, and grumpiness took hold.

I didn’t know what to do. We’d spent the night cold and mostly awake, and it didn’t help that food was getting hard to find. In the morning, we were back to walking and trying to find a way out. Walking in circles was frustrating at first, but felt utterly pointless after a second day. 

Still, we trudged on.

Chloe, ever energetic, was leading, while the rest of the group and I weren’t far behind. I looked at everyone, through some attempt to entertain myself on the walk. Valérie was still carrying Kieran, looking... not exactly exhausted physically, but just tired of having to do something. Kieran looked the opposite, poor guy. I really hoped he could get out of his cocoon like he said he would. 

Lola was hanging back, even though with her being the tallest she could’ve walked miles ahead of us. I could’ve sworn she was explicitly trying to step only in the walls’ shadow while we were walking. Maybe that slowed her down. I couldn’t tell if it was some sort of game she’d picked up or some way to accentuate her weird dark act. It was probably both. 

Gab was at the back of the group, keeping her distance, yet occasionally speeding up whenever we got a bit too far. Was it because she was awkward or actually slow on her feet? 

_Why don’t you just ask anyone about these things instead of theorizing?_

That sudden train of thought made me realize just how bored I’d been. Inner voices sometimes bring things up to your brain before you even consciously think of them. Though, why would I bring it up? Some of these things were better left unmentioned. They’d come off as judgy. Besides, maybe no one else was that desperately looking for a topic...

 _Oh, I promise they’re as bored as you are_ , went my inner voice.

I still decided against it. “Hey, Chloe, how are things looking up there?” 

Chloe flapped her wings excitedly before tucking them in and landing on my head. I could feel her small talons inadvertently scratching my skin underneath the fur behind my ears. It wasn’t especially comfortable, but I barely had time for a wince before she started talking.

“I kind of want to take a break,” she sighed, before reprising in a singsong voice, “Your head’s really warm and comfy.”

That was a bit disappointing. I really had thought she’d seen something! I guessed that it was hard to tell when there were good news with Chloe when she was always so unwaveringly cheerful.

“Good a time as ever,” I sighed, and was about to sit down for a break, but Valérie beat me to the punch. She practically collapsed right after placing Kieran against the wall. 

“Wow, thanks for the warning,” he muttered. 

Lola and Gab were quick to join, the latter leaning on the wall quietly. Lola, on the other hand, couldn’t wait to get her opinion in.

“This is useless”, Lola said. 

“Hey, stop moping. We’re getting out of this,” said Valérie. “We’re not having this talk again.”

“We’re not making any ground, though!”

“We are. We’re walking,” I said.

“... well, how do you know we’re getting out?” Lola continued.

“Because we just are, okay? There’s a way in, and there’s a way out.”

“And how would we know that?”

“… Because the guy who wrote the notes got out.”

At that, Lola stopped. I couldn’t tell if my words actually made a difference, or if she chose to yield for once. 

“If he got out, he got out”, she shrugged. “If he didn’t, though, that’s on you.”

I was a bit baffled by that response, especially when she flashed a grin right after. “It’s _on_ our only option,” I blurted out. “What else can we do? Sit here and wait for the mushrooms to go out? We can pick up the pace. Come on.”

Our impromptu break now cut short, my will redoubled to find a way out. I led the charge this time. The rest followed.

Near the end of the path, there was another Oran berry bush... or rather, what looked to be the rest of it. No berries were on the branches, and the leaves were dried up. It didn’t deter our spirit now that we’d gotten it.

I don’t know if it meant anything to the labyrinth that our spirits were up. At this point, it was possible. I say that because that’s also when we finally breached the final chamber.

It was about the same size as the dummy’s room, or the one Kieran and I had woken up in. The walls were the same gray colour, and the mushrooms still grew in the patterns we’d seen previously. What stood out, though, was strewn about paper that littered the room, and an inkwell that had been tipped over. The contents had spilled long before we arrived, and the ink had faded to the exact colour of the stripe on the wall.

This just reeked of trap. It was still better than an ambush somewhere in the unknown future, though. I took a step in.

As if on command, white light surged at the back of the room, concentrated in one oval about Lola’s size. It turned red as it defined itself into a slightly humanoid shape, standing on two legs but with a tail attached to it. It was also then that I noticed the sparks shaved off from it, falling and sinking through the ground as stray, square embers. Well, if we were in a video game, it was only a matter of time before the pixels came back.

The shape finally settled as it shed one last layer of red. What was left was... some kind of beige monkey? It seemed to be wearing a beret, two dog ears hanging and a dead-eyed stare underneath. Its tail swished around, it being long and adorned with a paintbrush-shaped tip.

“That’s a Smeargle,” Kieran announced.

“... Like... Lord of the Rings?” Valérie leaned into the Kakuna and whispered.

Before Kieran could tell her no, the Smeargle grunted, holding its head. It blinked out a few pixels, but they relentlessly foamed out of its mouth and eyes, still as vibrant a red as earlier. It let out an ear-piercing howl and started lunging at us. Before I could consider a peaceful outcome, or do anything-

I heard Chloe yell out a war cry in the distance. She zoomed past me, talons outstretched toward the Smeargle. She did land a hit, scratching its arm, but as it grunted in pain, it held its tail _menacingly_. Somehow. Even though it was paintbrush-shaped, the tail was clearly held like a handgun. The Smeargle took aim, and...

It launched a spew of fireballs in Chloe’s direction! She flew just out of range, looping back around and desperately flapping her wings as she rejoined the group. The embers that were left smouldered against the wall and ground. Back in our group, everyone was scrambling to come up with a plan.

“Lola, charge at it. You’re the biggest,” Valérie said.

“Are you kidding?” She almost looked insulted, but resumed her careless tone soon after. “I’m not getting through _that_.”

Valérie argued on, the Kakuna in her arms involuntarily being moved up and down. “But that blade on your head has gotta do _some_ damage-“

I racked my brain for some sort of a strategy. What did we even have as an offence force? An uncaring tank with a scythe? A teammate who couldn’t even move? A bird who’d just narrowly avoided fireball death?

At that moment, I remembered the one thing Kieran told me about my new species. 

“Kieran!” I exclaimed. 

“What?” He replied, dizzy from being shaken around. I didn’t have the time or thought to tell Valérie to put him down.

“I’m a fire thing, right? It shouldn’t do as much damage to me, right?”

His eyes bulged out. “Well, yeah, but-“

I’d left at the confirmation. I ran toward the Smeargle, charging at it with all the strength a slightly clumsy house cat could muster. Running was surprisingly easier than walking, since my limbs mostly moved in sync. 

_Front legs, back legs. Front legs, back legs. Front legs-_

Over the others, the Smeargle let out a growl, and brandished its tail again, this time aiming at me. A torrent of water surged through it at alarming speeds. My heart jumped, instinct took over and I leapt out of the way as if my life depended on it.

“Micheal!” Kieran yelled.

Not a drop hit me, but my fur stood on end. Something in me knew that I needed to stay out of contact of that water, even if I was fine drinking from under the Oran berry bush. I’m sure the same instinct took over Chloe as she dodged the flames, but the fear of fire was also decidedly human to begin with. I fell back to the entrance.

I ended up bumping into Gab, and tried my best to will my fur down to its previous state. She squinted, inspecting the enemy from her position.

“Smeargle can technically learn all possible moves” She told me, stern, but as quiet as ever. “We should’ve been more careful.”

“Thanks for that,” I said, panting. It was probably what Kieran had wanted to say to me before I charged in.

I looked around. Still near the entrance, the others kept on arguing about a plan, and in the middle of the room, the Smeargle was readying another attack. Amidst the chaos, I managed to quiet everyone.

“We need a plan”, I stressed, the Smeargle drawing closer. “Who’s good against that thing?”

Chloe landed on my head, almost giving me a heart attack. “Valérie! She’s super-effective if she has fighting type STAB moves.”

I didn’t understand where Valérie would get a knife, but it was worth a shot if this was the best course of action.

“Ok, Valérie, do... something. Think about a move and make it happen. It’s our best chance.”

As I turned to the back of the group to see her, I could only watch as she reared back and launched the attack.

“Take _this_!”

“Wait, no!” Kieran shrieked. “I wasn’t serious!”

Well, too late. Plan Projectile was a-go. I was forced to watch as Kieran hit the Smeargle right in the skull with a huge “BONK!”, bounced off, and landed unceremoniously on the floor.

And that _somehow_ did it.

The thing collapsed. A howl pierced the air, and as the Smeargle clutched its head, it disappeared the same way it came: through the pixels. It crumbled away in a cascade of red and white and faded away. 

“G-good plan,” Chloe commented, her talons still gripping on my fur tightly.

There was a stillness in the air, a quiet that told us the danger was over for now. We were left dumbfounded, unable to move.

The Smeargle dissolving into a bunch of pixels only momentarily distracted me from Kieran. Someone had _thrown_ him against a Pokémon. What the heck?

I rushed over to him, the others following. 

“Kieran? Kieran, you okay, buddy?” I called. I finally came to a halt right next to him, and I didn’t like what I saw.

Not only was he not responding, but his shell was split vertically through the back. In a sickening way, the tear reminded me of cut pie crust. The surface of his cocoon must’ve not been as strong as I had thought. 

I didn’t remember any slashing or cutting motions the Smeargle could’ve done to warrant the gash, but then again, maybe the pixels did it, or there was a sharp rock on the ground where Kieran had slid. The one good thing was that I didn’t see any blood... But did he even have any? Did _any_ of us? I didn’t know!

I was about to give Valérie a good old panicked chewing-out, along with the rest of the group, I’m sure, but then a bright white light burst through Kieran’s cut cocoon. I had to squint and distance myself from it.

“He’s...” Chloe started, her voice clear as day. She finally hopped to the ground. “He’s evolving!”

A luminous form emerged, leaving the shell behind. It grew out, adding in mass and height to the point where it dwarfed all of us except Lola. When it stabilized and the light finally dissipated, there stood a giant bee with two huge stingers for arms.

Well, more importantly, there stood Kieran.

“I’m back!” He yelled, thrusting his stingers in the air.

My eyes were drawn back to the shell. It was weird to consider that I’d thought Kieran was that cold, dead thing. He caught my eye and promptly skewered it with his stinger.

“Set it on fire.” He told me, waving the thing around. I saw a smile on his new bee face, but his eyes still held that same dead-tired look he’d had when he was a Kakuna.

“What?”

“You’re a fire-type, we gotta have a target for practice!”

“No!” I couldn’t hide my disgust. It hit a bit too close to home, seeing a friend unconscious and thinking they died or something. I didn’t want to hit him even more.

The others looked just as uncomfortable as me when Kieran threw the cocoon back down. Well, most of us.

“I’ll help you out,” said Lola.

I heard a crunch. Lola had stomped on the cocoon. Looking at everyone’s faces, only she and Kieran found it funny- him because of revenge, and her because she just had that sense of humour. After a brief high-five with her, Kieran’s face lit up even more.

“Wait! I can do _this_ now!”

Kieran’s stinger reached his back (with some impressive flexibility) and started taking care of an itch.

“Oh, God, this feels so good.”

“Watch out for your... your wings, man”, said Valérie, dumbstruck. I could tell she was trying to avoid his eye, but hers always found its way back to him.

It was kind of sad that Kieran felt such relief from scratching his back, but I really couldn’t blame him. It was the small victories that counted, and we needed to know and enjoy all the ones we could have.

As Kieran went on about how he’d never complain about walking ever again, my gaze turned to Gab, whose ear just twitched. It was unusual to watch for animalistic tics to know how my human classmates felt, but hey, it definitely made it easier. The ear twitch was accompanied by a swift head turn, so I tore my eyes away from her to stare in the same direction.

I didn’t see what it was, but I heard it. 

It started off as a low hum, but steadily grew in volume and pitch. Other voices joined in, forming harmonies, slowly but surely announcing something... important. 

“Guys?” I said, turning and expecting to interrupt Kieran, but everyone was already looking at where the sound was coming from, keeping silent (except maybe Lola muttering about a ‘foe deep in the shadows’). I looked back at Gab, locked eyes, and gestured for her to back away. We got with the group safely and mustered our best battle stances. Not the best intimidation tactic against a song, I’ll admit it, but it was what we had.

Then, we saw it.

A thin line of vertical light pierced the floor and ceiling against the far cave wall, before getting wider, small firefly-like lights emanating from the opening and gently floating around. The opening slowly formed a shape we were familiar with.

“The portal,” I gasped.

All movements ceased with what I could swear was a carrion bell sound resonating through the room. The portal stood, beckoning. The hum stopped, leaving us to hear each other’s relieved exhaling. 

“We did it!” Chloe exclaimed, unsurprisingly the first to speak up. “We’re going home!”

“Wait!” I exclaimed. All eyes turned on me. “Is it safe? I mean, look at what the last one’s... done to us.”

There was some nervous shuffling, but then came an unexpected response from Kieran.

“Do you want to stay here?” He asked. “There’s nothing left to eat, and the fighting’s presumably all done. We’re moving on to the next level.”

Valérie muttered: “Ok you _nerd_ -“

“Also, Micheal, I spent the last two days stuck inside a shell. We may face whatever later, but for now, don’t talk about what it’s done to _us_.”

I had never seen Kieran being bold. Ok, that was a lie, but I guess I’d never seen him be bold to make a valid point. We were all trapped in the same predicament, but if we had to play competitive...

“Sorry about that,” I nodded. “Let’s go in.”

“Ok, prepare for imminent nausea!” Kieran yelled, pointing to the portal.

“Oh no,” Chloe realized, her feathers going down, shrinking her considerably.

“Yeah, I’m pretty sure I puked in the last one,” joked Lola.

“Dude. Stop,” Valérie snapped. “Let’s go in.”

We all stepped in, one at a time. Gab went through second to last, nodding to me as I insisted I go after her. She’d gone to pick up nearly all the paper that had writing on it, however unintelligible the spilled ink had rendered some of them. She clutched them as if her life depended on it, which it maybe did. She disappeared like the others, like a stone thrown in opaque liquid. 

I took one last look at the dungeon, at the gray, craggy walls, the Oran branches, the glowing mushrooms. Then, my eye wandered to the new puddles on the floor and the soot that clung to the walls. I shuddered. It was all I needed. 

I stepped into the portal as well, and was met with honey-coloured light flooding my sight, and a floating sensation: a weird type of anti-gravity that somehow didn’t dizzy me. This was far more pleasant than the first transfer.

Why’d I take in the dungeon one last time? Would I miss it? 

_You did it because that’s the easiest things will be for a while_.

I winced as I realized what I knew in my heart. 

We had a long road to cover.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And thus this thing finally starts! I hope you enjoy your time here because I've got a long story where that came from :)


	5. Part 2: Struggle Bug, Chapter 1 (Kieran)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After the gang crosses the portal, they're met with a completely new patch of this world

Portals aren’t necessarily comfortable, but... compared to the first one, this smooth ride was a first-class flight. The wind caught in my wings as I emerged through the other side. Part of me was giddy at the thought of trying them out. Part of me being _all_ of my Beedrill fanboy brain.

The scenery that met me was so much more natural than the previous stage. I stumbled when I landed, tripping through a grassy hill filled with tree roots. When I looked around, trees and bushes filled my sight, and the sun was overhead. Long strands of grass bent slightly in the soft wind. Honestly, the forest was more jarring than the falling.

When steadying myself, I’d ended up instinctively reaching for the ground to use as an anchor. Bad idea. With my full weight put on my stinger, it sunk through the soft dirt and I fell on my knees.

I grumbled, pulling it out. Some bits of soil clung to it, and when I (again, _instinctively_ ) tried to wipe them off, I just ended up banging my two arm stingers together. 

“Ooh, what are we clapping for?” Lola asked from behind. “That epic fail?”

I sighed, turning to the newly landed Absol who’d apparently seen the whole thing. “If by fail you mean your slang from 2012, yeah, sure.” 

I stared her dead in the eye while slow-clapping, the sound like two rocks being repeatedly hit together. Ironically, the motion did get some dirt off my stinger. Lola took the quip in stride and started to bow, or at least execute the best simile she could muster as an Absol. 

_Wait, aren’t those things supposed to have poison in them?_ I thought, and stopped clapping immediately. If these were viable weapons, I couldn’t risk breaking them. I shouldn’t even had used them for a high-five earlier.

The rest of the group had reappeared in the meantime, all starry-eyed looking at the trees. 

“We’re not in Kansas anymore,” Chloe whispered, eyes aglitter. 

“Are you kidding?” Valérie jumped in. “We _are_ in Kansas; there’s no civilization for miles!”

“We don’t know that yet,” Micheal reassured, his fur still frazzled from the trip. “The cave might’ve been empty-“

“And what’s the painter monkey, then?” Valérie asked.

 _“This land’s beast_!” Shouted Lola dramatically.

“...but it was probably a closed system,” he continued. “This is an entire forest we can search. We can see the sky here.”

And indeed we could. I don’t know what it was about being able to see the sky, but it was invigorating, to say the least. Even seeing the clouds moving reassured me. 

_Didn’t know you were such a sap, Kieran_. Anyway, _I’m pretty sure none of us know any basic survival skills, so that’s just_ fantastic _._

Bright-eyed and bushy-tailed (literally in some cases), we headed out of the clearing and into the deep of the forest.

* * *

It didn’t take us long to find a dearly missed commodity.

“There’s a berry bush!” Chloe exclaimed.

Before us stood a shrub with wrinkly, half-moon shaped pink berries growing on every other branch. Despite the wrinkly bit, they still looked delicious. Was it because we were so hungry? I had a terrible feeling that after all of this dimensional caper was over and done, we’d have a hard time not eating random things off the floor.

“Hey, careful, we don’t know those!” Micheal called. He started a run toward the others and the bush.

“Gab, Chloe, and I do,” I sighed, abruptly blocking his path with a stinger. “They’re Persim berries, they won’t hurt us.”

“Are there no poisonous berries in Pokémon?” He asked skeptically.

“Why would they make any when all you do in-game is feed them to your Pokémon?” I rolled my eyes. 

When I glanced at the bush again, half the berries were gone, either being in a neat pile ready for carrying or in Lola’s chasm of a mouth. We could probably still keep some Persim berries for cases of confusion, if we could feed it to a Pokémon practically having a seizure. Well, if it worked in the games...

“If anything, they could make all of us more clear-headed,” I added. 

“So many berries here and no meat... There’s no chance of us finding a rotisserie chicken in here, is there?” He smiled, but I wasn’t sure if he was joking. 

“If we run into a Torchic, maybe. Otherwise, I’m assuming we have to go vegan.”

And that turned the mood to pure awkwardness. Some silence passed and my mind scrambled to find something to fill the gaping void.

“Maybe you could’ve looked up some Pokémon info before this,” I grumbled, and immediately recognized my mistake. I turned to Micheal. His little Litleo face looked as annoyed as he could make it.

“Gosh, you’re right, I should’ve stopped all my studying to learn this essential skill.”

“Fine” I said. “I’ll stop, jeez.”

“Yes,” he continued, “let me go home and read up all I can on Pokémon, so I can be ready whenever this situation comes up again.”

“Good God, I get it, I messed up.” I crossed my arms, stingers grating against each other. Since when did his sarcasm get such bite?

 _Probably since he got the fangs to match_.

Speaking of fangs, Micheal had already padded over to the rest of the group to join in the feast. I made my way there right after him.

The area was littered with leaves and tiny honeycombs, which had probably fallen from the hives in the branches. There were few of them, not to mention they were regular-sized, so I didn’t harp on that detail too much. I was too busy focusing on my long-awaited dinner.

I climbed down the hill, avoiding tree roots and finding the odd foothold. My legs were small, but well able to carry my weight and balance fine. It was probably easier to get used to walking as a Beedrill after forgetting I could for a while. 

The Persim berries looked better up close, and a sheen from dew made them all the more appetizing. Still wary of my stingers, I simply bit one off a branch and went from there. 

Now, I don’t like to exaggerate, but that thing tasted out of this world. Well, I guess _literally_ as well, in this case. It was just the right amount of each flavour, and that crunch as I bit into it was satisfying as all heck. It was then I knew that I would single-handedly eat all existing Persim berries and bring the species to extinction.

“Woah, careful champ,” Lola chuckled. “You’re drooling.”

“M-hm,” I absentmindedly answered, before shaking my head and finishing the berry. “Whoops.”

“Yeah, _whoops_.”

“Let me freak out. These are amazing.”

“Meh, I liked the other ones better,” she sighed, cocking her head to the side. 

I didn’t want to think about the Oran berries I completely missed out on, so I ignored the Absol and turned my attention to everyone else. They looked done with the food, which prompted a new group discussion.

“All right, what’s the plan now?” Valérie said, standing up and putting her hands on her hips.

“We should scout the area,” Gab said. The Emolga immediately put her head back down after the group looked to her for more. 

“After all that walking? _And_ the boss battle?” Lola whined.

“We’re _not_ calling it a boss battle,” Valérie shot in.

“I do agree with Gab,” Micheal said. “We should learn what we can about where we are. Caves and forests are both places we shouldn’t be in, or at the very least not unsupervised.”

“Teacher’s pet,” Lola grinned.

The Litleo rolled his eyes and continued. “We can look after ourselves. I know that. But we can’t go home without looking around the area, and that goes without saying.”

“Well, the sun’s setting soon,” Chloe piped up.

Sure enough, the clouds overhead had started to turn a bright pink. 

_Leave it to the cloud bird to notice the clouds._

“Okay, that settles it, then!” Micheal said. “We’ve got a short amount of daytime left, so might as well go around the hill to see if there is anything of note here!”

He left his half-eaten berry on the spot and started walking past the bush. It hadn’t even been a second before he practically yelled at us.

“Come on, guys, I’m starting to feel like the only one who has family back home. Let’s go.”

This took a _while_. 

By the end of the day, we’d ended up with a rough mental map of the area within a 100-meter radius. And by a rough mental map, I mean that we just realized that it was only trees. Maybe the others took in more landmarks than I did. We did take note of nearby berry bushes. Most weren’t Persim, actually. We’d have a wide variety of choice for our next meal, to which Lola, Chloe, and I were ecstatic about. With the sky darkening, leaving its red, purple, and coppery orange, I knew our next meal would be breakfast.

When the sun went down, the stars went up. As is custom, I guess. The sky had turned an inky blue, but the moon hadn’t shown up yet. Gab hadn’t started up her Flash either, so it was unsettlingly dark. I’d only seen that kind of dark once, and not even in the cave. I’d gone camping with my family when my brother and I were really young. While there, the lack of light pollution really brought out the stars, but threw away the rest of the forest. Even when we’d overused flashlights and bonfire lumber before turning our heads up to the sky, there was no trace of that light as soon as it had gone out. Dark is nature at its most immovable, so it also makes you feel small.

Well, mosquitoes are also nature, and boy was I glad that there were none to see here as opposed to that tent from ten years ago. I guessed I was the bug here. We hadn’t seen any other animals close by, actually. 

We ended our trek at the top of the hill. It was one of the only places where the trees let out; a wide, open space. It almost felt like I could finally breathe, even though the trees were technically the ones responsible for the oxygen. I sat down with the rest of the group on top of the hill, looking up and listening to the sound of the wind through the trees.

“Is that the Big Dipper?” Micheal asked, puzzled.

When I looked around, sure, I found it. I never was an astronomy guy, but even the Big Dipper was easy for me to locate.

“Yeah?” I answered. “How could you not know that one for sure?”

“No, I mean...” he started, shaking his head, “why is it here? Do they have a Big Dipper in the Pokémon world, or are we on Earth all of a sudden?”

“I don’t know, Micheal, are we human right now?” I retorted.

“Come on, man,” he sighed. “I don’t know this stuff.”

With everyone on top of the hill, most of us were sitting down. It wasn’t really any use to keep going in the dark, even with Lola’s self-proclaimed ‘super-vision’.

“What does everyone say about hitting the hay?” Micheal asked. “Yay or nay?”

“Yay!” Lola practically shouted. She collapsed on the grass soon after.

A couple of “yay”s later, the rest of us joined Lola. Valérie set the berry pile near a tree where they wouldn’t roll down the hill, Gab laid herself on top of the notes so they wouldn’t be carried away by wind, and Chloe made herself cozy between the two of them. I just laid down on my stomach some meters away from all this, so my wings wouldn’t get rolled on or broken. Also... I wasn’t one to cuddle.

We were all ready to go under when Micheal’s head rose up again. “Wait, should we sleep in shifts?” 

At that, everyone’s eyes slammed open, especially Chloe. For someone so excited about the forest earlier, she actually looked afraid now.

“You know, in case something like that Smeargle shows up again.”

I didn’t need Micheal trying to shepherd us like he was some teacher. The concern was real, but so was the condescension. Probably.

“Ugh, wasn’t there something about needing to find that thing in the last possible spot?” Lola groaned. 

“We’d hear it coming, right?” Valérie said, sitting up. 

“Well, should we take any chances?” Micheal asked.

That set us straight. Even though we’d won against the Smeargle, that victory was purely luck-based. There was no telling what could happen if we were cornered like that again.

“Yay or nay?”

There was a resounding chorus of agreements, save for Lola, who buried her face in the grass with a groan. We ignored her.

“So, we’re thinking two people at a time, maybe three hours a shift?” Micheal suggested.

“Wait, how will we know what time to switch?” Valérie asked.

“Oh, that’s easy,” Chloe said. I guess she didn’t feel the need to explain herself, and she simply pointed upward with her wing. A couple seconds passed before anyone said anything.

“What? Do you expect us to call on you?” I said. “We’re not in class.”

She jumped. “Oh, no, not that! I was pointing to the stars. If we can see Ursa Major here I’m sure we can find the North Star.”

“Ursa Major?” 

“The Big Dipper,” Micheal said. He’d said it plainly enough, but sent a smug smile my way when he’d finished, as if to say: ‘ _now,_ who doesn’t know their stars?’

Chloe nodded. “There are two stars in the Big Dipper that you can connect with the brightest star in the Little Dipper as a single line. That bright star—the North Star— doesn’t move in the night sky, but the rest do. They move in a circle around it.” 

Valérie was taken aback. “Wait, so it’s like a built-in sky clock?”

“Yeah?”

“Holy crap, that’s cool.”

Chloe blushed from under her blue feathers. “It is! There are a few more steps to it, though.”

As she laid those out, it was also decided that Micheal and I would get the first shift, Lola and Valérie the second, and Gab and Chloe the third and last. At this point, it didn’t feel as much a measure of protection, but some overnight camp activity. When had we become this casual about the whole Pokémon situation?

The others settled in, and Micheal and I sat and stared at the stars.

* * *

Three hours. That was a little less than three class periods. For three _hours_ , we had to sit still a few meters away from the camp, listening to the wind in the trees and grass. Either that or whisper away a conversation, hoping we wouldn’t wake someone up. It got old fast.

I spent a long time watching stars, the coniferous trees, their roots, looking up at the stars again only to be disappointed when they hadn’t moved, and then the fronds from the Persim bush. It was a continuous cycle, boring me out of my mind until I found it again and stared into the void.

It was probably what having a job felt like.

Twenty minutes passed since our last conversation attempt before Micheal stretched and turned to me.

“It’s weird how normal this is starting to feel.”

“Speak for yourself”, I laughed. “We’ve gone through two portals in the last three days _and_ I have wings now.”

He shook his head. “Don’t get me wrong. It’s still weird. What I meant, though, was that it’s definitely calmed down since... the first landing.”

“We’re calling it that now?”

“Well, what else?”

I shrugged. Both ends of the portals we’d been through so far had involved jarringly making contact with the ground. The last one was way smoother, so I at least remembered a small gap of air between it and the grass. So yeah. It was a landing.

“When it was just the two of us, somehow it didn’t click that there was a way out,” he continued. “But when more people showed up, especially after Chloe-“

“Valérie and Chloe barging in _reassured_ you?”

He laughed. “Yeah, I guess? I don’t know why, but it felt right. We did need Valérie for you, after all.”

“Oh, yeah, we absolutely needed her to throw me like dead weight.”

“... yep, that one was rough.”

Silence settled back in, and I wondered if this conversation had met its unfortunate end like all the others. The Litleo wasn’t finished, though.

“No offence to you, but I’m glad it’s not just the two of us,” he sighed.

I thought back to Chloe somehow knowing how to make the sky into a clock, and glanced up. “I’m more glad that we’ve got some people who know Pokémon, but yeah, same. Wait. Where was that star when we started?”

He squinted and got closer to me to see where I pointed my stinger. “Huh. I think we’re done.”

We woke up Lola and Valérie, and I went to sleep, my limp wings over me serving as the world’s thinnest (and worst) blanket.

* * *

When I woke up, it was past sunrise. Chloe and Gab were on watch, apparently choosing to sit near the stream and throw pebbles in rather than waking everyone else up. My getting up didn’t elicit any reaction, which... worried me, since they were on _watch_ , but what I wanted to do would work better if I went alone anyway. With a quick wave and shout, I informed them I was going to take a walk, and I was off.

I’d had a flying dream, which was shockingly normal compared to being stuck in a forest in a Beedrill’s body. It was about to get even more standard if I managed to learn to fly for real.

I closed my eyes, trying to put together every piece of focus I could get. I felt my two sets of wings jutting out of my back, catching a small breeze as it passed through them. I willed them to spread out.

And nothing happened.

I tried again, and _again_ they didn’t open. I groaned, deciding to sit down. I must’ve sat on one of my wings wrong, because I felt a tug and a twitch as they repositioned themselves. I stood up again, and tried once more. Nothing. So these things only decided to work when I didn’t want them to? That was just _fantastic_.

I resigned to walking back. No use trying out something that didn’t want to work. Not until breakfast, at least. Needless to say, I made my way back to camp slightly irritated.

I started to walk up the hill, on top of which I saw that everyone was now awake and taking their share of the berries. They’d have better not have taken all the Chople berries. I had no idea what they were supposed to be, but they looked _good_. I greeted my classmates with what I’d hoped was a relaxed tone, but I seriously needed some of those berries right now.

Micheal turned his head toward me, and I noticed his tail not dragging on the ground as it had for the past few days. He nudged a Chople berry— thank God— in my direction with his paw and smiled at me. 

As I started eating, I was the slightest bit disappointed. This one was fairly bland, with a pit in the middle. I was expecting something sweeter, but—

Then the spicy taste kicked in. Without any will from my part, I spat out the half-chewed remains on the grass and had a coughing fit. Poor Micheal looked at the many Chople pits he’d finished off, probably wondering if he’d given me a bad one. I chocked it up to Fire types getting a _stupid_ advantage with spicy food. I snatched a Persim berry out of the pile and let its miraculous taste extinguish the fire on my taste buds. I sighed in complete relief and relaxation, and my gaze went straight to the clouds.

A belch from Lola brought me out of my fruit-induced trance, and she let out her own contented sigh.

“Done after half the pile, huh?” Valérie muttered.

“Shut up and eat one of those mango things,” Lola said.

“Blech, no. Fruits either have a peel you can eat or they aren’t meant to be eaten at all.”

Valérie kind of had a way of having opinions on anything. Most didn’t matter, but hell if she cared.

“You don’t even like bananas?” Chloe asked, distraught.

“Ew,” the Meditite shuddered, reaching for another Oran berry and partaking in it.

I snickered. “You better be ready if Kasib berries have a peel, though. You can’t handle many Ghost hits, and you’ll have a bad time if you need—“

Valérie shoved her hand in front of my mouth to tell me to stop talking. After a few seconds, she swallowed her bite and retreated her hand. “If you’re going to keep lecturing us about things we don’t know, you might as well _explain_ them first, nerd.”

At that, Micheal’s eyes lit up. He looked to Gab, Chloe and I. 

I sighed. “What? What do you want?”

“I want you three to make a Pokémon lecture!”


	6. Part 2: Struggle Bug, Chapter 2 (Kieran)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You'd think the people suddenly stuck in the Pokémon world would at least be Pokémon-savvy, right?  
> Nope. Only half of them.

“I want you three to make a Pokémon lecture!” Micheal announced.

“What?” I grumbled.

“So we know everything about the ones we have to fight!” He declared, slamming his paw on the ground. Okay, that was maybe a bit too much enthusiasm. Those berries did a number on him like an over-fuelled fireplace. “There’s about fifty of them, right?”

“No, that’s very wrong.”

“All the more important!” Micheal said. “Do you see how out of the loop I am? Since we’ve got time here, it’d be fun to figure out what everyone can bring to the table.”

“Yeah, having a campfire would be good,” Valérie chipped in. “And we need the fire lion to know how to do that.”

Oh, Micheal. We weren’t about to do something this stupid.

* * *

“This is stupid”, I groaned. 

Indeed, we’d gotten stuck writing down everything in a small area full of dry, loose dirt. Lola, Valérie, and Micheal had left to do some more recon now that we had daylight. We couldn’t use the pages Gab had brought over to write— no ink we could use, and no will to accidentally write over something important. Finding out that my stingers essentially became giant pencils against the dirt, I’d done most of the work— listing off all the types, which of them applied to the group, and which to watch out for. There were other facts, like abilities, and possible evolutions, but if half our group didn’t understand types... we needed to cement in the basics first.

“How is this stupid?” Chloe asked, fluttering about. She’d had to fly around to get a good view of our makeshift PowerPoint slide.

“We don’t even have internet,” I shrugged. “It’d be easier if we could pull up Bulbapedia or something.”

“I thought you were all the database you needed,” Gab retorted.

Our eyes sprang to her, and Chloe couldn’t help but laugh. 

_Yeesh!_

“Well, we don’t even have usable paper! We’re writing in the dirt,” I grumbled.

“We’ve been doing all right so far,” Chloe pointed out. “Try to think of it as a cool memory exercise!”

Only Chloe could think of memory exercises as cool. With her being one year younger than all of us, I couldn’t help but feel that she hadn’t been hit with the general high school mood yet. I didn’t know how else to explain it. I felt that this much enthusiasm for education was just waiting to be snuffed out in a year or so. She continued to suggest things to add to our rapidly diminishing writing space, hopping around the words already written down.

“For abilities, do we go the Mystery Dungeon route or the main game route?” Chloe asked. “I mean, since Mystery Dungeon applies so much, humans turning into Pokémon and all...”

“What’s the difference?” I asked.

“For starters, they have different effects,” she answered. “Also, a Pokémon has all their possible abilities at once.”

“Not in Super,” Gab pointed out. “Only before Gates, right?”

Of all the moments to realize I should’ve played _any_ Mystery Dungeon game, now was a terrible time. I couldn’t even place the abbreviations in my head. It probably didn’t matter anyway. Gab might have called me out on ego, but she’d accurately represented the importance of my knowledge to this stupid presentation.

“Oh, come to think of Explorers, we should watch out for Oren berries!” Chloe gasped, Gab writing it down with her finger.

“Uh, yeah, duh, they should heal us a bit”, I said, walking over to where Gab was writing. “We ran into them too early to properly use— hey, you spelt ‘Oran’ wrong.”

“ _Oren_. In Mystery Dungeon, there are decoy items that do the opposite of what they’re supposed to,” she said. “Oren berries give you damage.”

“Don’t get me started on Reviser seeds,” Chloe laughed.

“Why would we be eating seeds in the first place?” I crossed my arms, the stingers sliding into a comfortable position for once.

“Stop being a grump,” Chloe whined. “This is a valid point.”

“Yeah, but _I’ll_ never hear the end of it if something’s wrong in here.”

Chloe gave Gab a questioning look, which she returned with an eye roll. As much as I hate to admit it, that was the one that shut me up. 

Whatever game we were supposed to be in, if one specific game at all, it didn’t matter. Minor things like learnsets we couldn’t even look up were not crucial to our quest. Only getting home was. I think we all knew that the only way was through. 

Presentations shouldn’t need to be that important.

* * *

“We come bearing gifts!” Exclaimed Lola, right as Valérie dropped all the berries she was carrying, letting them tumble on the grass. How Lola got her to go along with it, I’d never know.

“Oh, good!” I said. I’d spotted a few Persim in there.

With the group back together, the presentation was underway. Close to the presentation area, there was a old, moss-covered fallen tree next to its flat stump. That became the makeshift couch, as people leaned on it to listen.

“Are we ready to get this over with?” I asked.

We hadn’t rehearsed, so this was going to be a fun one. Lola and Valérie shrugged, while Micheal gave a fervent nod. “Yeah. Go ahead.”

Lola agreed. “Let’s learn some Pokémons.”

I took a deep breath. “Ok, first off, Pokémon- or any Pokémon name, for that matter- stays the same when it’s plural.”

“We really came here for a grammar lesson?” Lola whispered to Valérie.

I sighed. “No, I’m just getting rid of a few pet peeves along the way. You know, as a bonus.”

Valérie gave me a look, crossing her arms. 

“I know you and Chloe are our Pokémon encyclopedias”, she started, overlooking our Emolga classmate, “but I’m not sure I want to leave my future in the hands of the guy who didn’t even do his part of the 1984 PowerPoint.”

Oh. Oh, of course she’d bring that up. “It was one time!”

“Yeah, the one time a presentation counted for 30% of our grade,” she grumbled. “Maybe do your work instead of spending two of our five minutes going on a tangent on time travel.”

“That was a thematic comparison, thank you very much, and Julia agreed to that bit! Two against one!” 

“Two against one doesn’t matter when the book isn’t even remotely about _time travel_ —“

“Look, can we stop piling on him?” Micheal talked over the growing laughter from everyone else. “This really isn’t what we should be concerned with.”

“Also, you should see I did most of this presentation,” I shot in, showing off my writing stinger that still had a cover of dirt on.

Valérie rolled her eyes and sighed, leaning more of her weight on the fallen tree. This was going to be a long one. Thankfully, Micheal made himself a good moderator.

There were a few hiccups along the way (for example, Valérie adamantly refused to believe Ghost was a type until even Gab backed me up), but we mostly got our point across. I think. The important thing was to establish the group’s possible abilities, different stats and how they might apply to real life... and our massive weakness against Rock. We were two not very effective Flying types, one Bug, and one Fire. That left one neutral Dark, and one super effective Fighting type... with garbage defence. We’d need to sort that out when moves came into play.

Then came individual Pokémon species. Thankfully, everyone could wrap their head around the simple concept of a giant bee and they’d seen me evolve from a Kakuna, so we started with that one. Emolga was also easy. We just had to say “flying Pikachu” and everyone got the gist of it.

Micheal, as a Litleo, already had the general idea. Since he was a Pokémon that might have the Rivalry ability, though, we’d have to account for it later. Lola surprisingly knew enough about Absol, at least for someone who’d never played a Pokémon game. What didn’t surprise me was her gushing about her newfound ability to predict disasters. 

That left Valérie and Chloe.

“I’m glad edgelord over there is happy with her superpower,” Valérie said, “but what am _I_ even supposed to be?”

“A weird gnome?” Lola smirked.

“Oh, a _gnome_?” Chloe exclaimed, with utmost sincerity. “That would explain a lot.”

“... That was a joke, pal,” Lola stated.

“Oh.”

I spoke up. “Valérie, no matter what it’s based off of, you’re a Meditite. The only thing in its Pokédex entry states that it trains really hard and eats one berry a day.”

“That doesn’t seem efficient. I’ll keep eating, thanks.”

“Gotcha.”

“And Chloe?” She asked.

“I’m a Swablu now, but soon enough I’ll be a super cool dragon,” she giggled, with an uncharacteristic violent glint in her eye.

“Wait, why would Pokémon have a monster who’s not supposed to eat?” Valérie reprised. It was like she’d just now heard the paraphrased Pokédex entry. “Where’s my energy supposed to come from?”

“I don’t know, maybe you eat auras?” I said. “You’re a psychic—“

“That doesn’t make sense. They’re not tangible.”

“It was a hypothesis, leave me alone!” I grumbled.

Gab raised her paw. “I think you should eat what you can, but maybe fasting is what makes the psychic powers come? If that makes sense?”

She barely had time to look away before Valérie started to rant again.

“I don’t believe you! How is that any more logical?”

“Oh my _God_ , Valérie!” Micheal snapped.

The forest fell silent, and Micheal’s ears and tail drooped a few seconds in. Evidently, that came out louder than he’d planned. As the one well-mannered guy of the group, it was a bit weird to hear him shout like that. I mean, not as weird as it would be for Gab, but close.

He sighed. “We can come back to that later. We should be done with the Pokémon stuff for now, right?”

“We haven’t covered moves at all—“ I started.

“Great, we’ll do it later then!” He smiled. His ears were back up. “Let’s talk about survival skills. That’s also important, right?”

His blatant attempt to change the subject was overlooked and forgiven. We did kind of need a break. Burnout with this group hit like a truck. I nabbed a Persim berry from the pile and sat against the stump, glaring at my now useless dirt PowerPoint.

“Okay!” He started. “Chloe, we obviously have your star trick for time, so I assume you know more things like that?”

She nodded. “YES! I have one for the day too. If the sun’s over there, we have about three hours of daylight left.”

Even Lola was baffled by that one. “Excuse me, what? How do you know that one? Can you point north too?”

“No...” she admitted.

“That’s a start though! Any other skills we should know about?” Micheal asked.

Chloe raised her wing. “Oh! I think Valérie speaks a bit of French...”

This was answered with a few snickers, and I piled onto the past week’s sarcasm.

“Fantastic. If all we need to beat the big bad dungeon boss is a speech in flowery language, we’ll call on you. Count _me_ out, though.”

Micheal shot me a look. I understood it as a warning. I avoided his stare and finished my Persim berry.

“Let’s talk about shelter,” Valérie said. “Last night was fine, and I guess we can do with no fire because it isn’t that cold, but it’s gonna be tough when there’s rain.”

“We can make a lean-to,” Micheal said. “We’ll add that to the list.”

He padded over to the dirt drawing pad and swished away the entire section on species. I got up. If he was going to destroy my creation, I might as well have control on rebuilding it. 

I wrote down more and more suggestions, including dry wood for a fire and Persim fronds for... something. I didn’t remember what; Gab had suggested it and I couldn’t hear her clearly.

This was just turning into summer camp.

The sky had started to get the slightest hint of yellow when we finally got to the moves discussion. Thankfully, no one had desecrated that section. I made my way through the pawprint-infested area, sick of arguments over the drinkability of the nearby stream’s water, and pointed to the movesets list.

“We’re talking moves now,” I said, trying desperately to clear the cloud of boredom in my head. “Survival’s fine but we’re not going to use bad water to beat up a Pokémon.”

“Yeah, sure,” Micheal replied.

Chloe hopped to my side shortly after Gab walked over. “Muddy Water’s bad water, and that works.”

“Fantastic, Chloe, you see any Water Pokémon here?”

She huffed, and Gab told the others to come over. Again, the slide was already ruined beyond repair, so everyone could walk over anything that wasn’t the movesets list.

When talking movesets list, I mean a _rough_ one. Most of the other stuff was written down fine from memory, but this? Let them call me a fake fan for not knowing movesets for a potential of nine random different species of Pokémon. Ten if you count Kakuna, but that one was over with _and_ the easiest one. 

“Okay,” I started, tracing circles around a keyword. “This has the same basic idea as types. A move can be any type, and you’re not limited to attacks of your own type.”

“Yeah,” Gab agreed. “Flash is Normal-type even though I’m not.”

So far so good. There wasn’t even any feedback from a certain Meditite.

I reprised. “Of course, there’s different kinds of attacks, like physical and special. They’re more like melee versus long-range, the only real difference is whether or not you make contact.”

Chloe chipped in. “Well, that and they rely on different stats.”

I continued. “Yeah, I guess all species deal physical and special damage differently, and deal _with_ it differently too.”

Lola jumped up. “Got it. Now, what can we actually do?”

Chloe landed on Lola’s head, and she surprisingly didn’t shake the Swablu off. “Oh, gosh, there’s so much! Micheal can spit fire, Valérie can punch rocks to rubble, I can do some flying attacks, you can slash at stuff with your claws...”

“I’m gonna poison the enemy,” I grinned. “And probably shoot some needles at them, or something.”

“Um...” Gab raised her hand. “I don’t think we’re quite there yet...” 

“Yeah...” Chloe admitted, hopping off Lola. “We’ll be lucky if we can manage a Quick Attack.”

“How fast it that?” Valérie cut in. She’d put on a smile I was kind of scared of.

“Blurry, at least?” I shrugged. “I don’t know, and you can’t do it anyway. It’s probably just Gab. Maybe Lola.”

“Rolling around at the speed of blur,” Lola laughed. “That’s stupid. I like the sound of it.”

“That’s all fine and good,” Valérie moped, “but how do we even access moves?”

We did have one person who’d executed a move so far. All eyes turned to Gab, her ears drooping from the sheer eye contact. 

“I don’t know,” she shrugged. “I just tried it.”

“Elaborate. You mean focusing on it?” Micheal asked.

“No? Yes? Maybe?” She stammered. “It was like going on autopilot, but I had to find the button to start.”

“My theory is that it’s like innate muscle memory,” Micheal said. “Like a reflex we have because it’s in our new brains. We just have to figure out how to tap into those.”

“I did learn to fly fast,” Chloe bragged. “It might’ve been that instead of logistics.”

“All right,” he said. “We just need to listen to instincts, then. Gab, go try a Quick Attack.”

“Um—“

Valérie sighed. “Yeah, yeah, we’ll hold the notes for you. Now go!”

Gab walked to the stump and closed her eyes, focus intense on her face. I could practically see her thought process, her mind repeating our hypothesis over and over. Finally, she threw herself in a pirouette and turned her back to us. Her tail, meanwhile, swished furiously against the dirt. The sight was so calculated yet _pointless_ that I couldn’t suppress a snort— but even Lola had had the decency to stay quiet. I couldn’t help it when I didn’t have anything to block my mouth with. It still earned me a look of disappointment from Micheal.

“What move do you make of this?” He asked, ignoring the sight of Gab three seconds from a full-blown embarrassment-fuelled anxiety attack.

I thought for a second, then grinned when I realized just how low of a level we all were. “I think it’s Tail Whip.”


	7. Part 2: Struggle Bug, Chapter 3 (Kieran)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> bug boi gets steamed

The later assessment for the rest of the group didn’t hold much more promise. When asking Gab what worked, she shrugged.

“I was thinking of what Micheal said,” she sighed. “And I just... tapped into a corner of my brain that knew Tail Whip, I guess?”

I sighed. It wasn’t much help, but at least it was a start. We got to work. And by work, I mean we all went our separate ways at the edge of the dirt area and tried figuring out what the hell Micheal meant. If that was even what worked in the first place.

He’d said that we had to tap into our reflexes. So... did moves have the same thought process as trying to catch a glass of water you’d knocked over? With my track record, that would be worrying. Even in a battle situation, I wasn’t sure my brain could be forced to click in a useful way. However, as I looked at my stingers, I remembered that I didn’t even _have_ the brain I’d started out with. 

Around me, I just saw classmates trying to get used to their new bodies. Lola had started to examine her claws but eventually focused her sights on the canopy above. Gab was off in her corner, her hand on her forehead and ears dropping. Chloe held her wings outstretched, as if she hadn’t figured out how to fly yet and was determined to find out. Micheal was the first I noticed actively trying to discover a new move, not just a Pokémon quirk or sorting out his thoughts. He kept trying to spit an Ember on the ground, but evidently, he wasn’t having much luck. It just looked like he was imitating a cat getting a hairball out of its system.

Valérie had walked around and settled on hitting the stump Gab had stood on for her Tail Whip. I’d heard she’d done karate before, so she was built for the fighting type. “Punch” might’ve not been a move, but it did send a good chunk of wood flying. Thankfully, it didn’t hit any of us. 

_Would that count as a Grass move?_

Valérie grinned and tried to stare the stump down, clenching her fists. I noticed the instant she gave up on tearing it apart telekinetically. Her face now bore a scowl, brow furrowed and teeth clenched. I couldn’t tell whether it was because of frustration or concentration.

She punched the stump again. This time, nothing came out other than a crunching sound. At that point, she looked up, and she caught me spacing out. I turned my head away. 

“I’m getting firewood,” she declared.

As she crossed the dirt, she caught Micheal’s eye. 

“Wait, should any of us go out alone?” He asked. “That’s uncharted territory you’re walking into.”

She seemed to ignore him and kept going, the trees casting elongated shadows now that we barely had any daytime left. 

Micheal looked around, his eye as terrifying as a teacher’s when choosing which group would do their presentation first. I turned my head away, hoping to avoid getting picked to go with Valérie, but I felt the exact moment when his gaze landed on me. I felt it like fire.

 _No_.

“Kieran, you want to go with her?”

I was going to retort a rejection back, but as I saw Micheal again, I realized he looked like he was going to be sick. The Bug type in me told me to get away before an Ember actually emerged. Micheal didn’t need to add anything.

“Wait up,” I yelled to Valérie, who was already three quarters up a hill we hadn’t gone over yet. 

Valérie only nodded, not giving me as much as a glance over. She kept walking in her steadfast way, and I climbed the hill she’d just crossed as fast as I could. I could do with some change of scenery, even if it was with her.

* * *

Fate (or Micheal, rather) had decided that it was Valérie and I’s turn to fetch stuff. Well, more accurately, Valérie’s, since she had hands. I was mostly there for my amazing emotional support. That’s how it worked, right? You know, send in the two people who meshed the least well together to do something and have one to do nothing substantial— a fact that the other would never let go. That would work out fine. Honestly, that was probably Micheal’s unironic thought process. 

We must’ve spent an hour wandering around, taking notes of landmarks so we could find our way back. If I’d gone with Chloe, she’d probably make those into a song. Instead, I was stuck with Valérie. She had a good eye for dead trees, though. By which I mean we still hadn’t found one up to her _standards_. 

The forest was disappointingly barren of fallen branches and twigs, and the ones attached to trees were too high to reach. The only trace that something even lived here was the stray honeycombs littering the grass. The bugless hives up above were nestled within the branches, so comfortably that it was as if they were taunting us. With the lack of small fuel available, we had to look for the perfect tree, like it was Christmas or something. If it was too big, we couldn’t carry it (especially since the trees hadn’t shrunk with us). If it was too thick, we couldn’t cut it. If it was too tall, it wouldn’t fit in our nonexistent living room. It really was early, with it still being November. 

It’d been a quiet trip; a “how about this one?” here, a “nope”, “not that one”, and “it’s still green, stupid” there, but nothing much else. Other than that, though, she’d kept her remarks to herself, and I’d done so with mine. Valérie was weird in the way that she was a chatterbox only when she wanted to. Translation: when she had power over the conversation. The pervasive lack of birdsong or cicada noises made the silence deafening.

Finally, we found our holy grail: a young oak tree that was thin and of manageable weight. It even had the first dead branches I’d seen surrounding it. It was dead, so it wasn’t even like we could feel bad about taking it or anything.

“All right!” Valérie said, rubbing her hands together.

I sighed, content that we’d finally gotten to a consensus. I wasn’t sure we had a lot of daylight left, so we had to get back to the others as soon as we could to start the fire. Valérie grabbed the tree and started to push it to the right.

I stood there awkwardly a few feet away. It’s not like I could help. I couldn’t get any solid grip on the tree even if I tried. Still, that uncomfortable feeling of not contributing lingered. That pushed me back to my original duty, and I turned to conversation.

“So, what was that earlier about the PowerPoint?” I opened.

“I said what I said,” she stated. “I don’t trust you to be reliable, especially in a survival scenario.”

“We’re not going to mention that maybe I don’t want to trust the person who threw me against a Pokémon?” 

I didn’t know how well a Beedrill face conveyed emotion, but I hoped my current expression showed more anger than hurt. It was hard enough to tell what my Meditite classmate was thinking; but when I couldn’t even look at myself...

“We won, and you evolved, right?” She stopped pushing to face me. “So it was the right thing to do.”

“Wow,” I huffed. “But you didn’t know that, though!”

“I was told to attack by Micheal and Chloe, and we didn’t know how to do anything else. Besides, you’d agreed to it.”

“Yeah, as a joke! I laughed at Plan Projectile!” 

She rolled her eyes. _That,_ I could read. My antennae twitched without any input from me.

I continued. “And _that_ , by the way, is not an equivalent to messing up some school presentation. I’ll own up to that because it was stupid and I should’ve read the book.”

“Oh, of course you didn’t read the—“

I cut her off. “But the worst that happened was a bad mark on a piece of paper! You threw a living being into—”

“I’ll reiterate: what else should I have done? We don’t know any useful “moves” now and we sure as hell didn’t back then!”

“ _I_ actually know Pokémon! If you’d paid any attention to the presentation, you’d have noticed!”

“Jesus Christ,” she groaned, returning to pushing the tree. “Let it go.”

I rolled my eyes and crossed my arms. There was just no reasoning with someone who refused to be wrong. Valérie managed to bend the tree the slightest bit right, splintering the wood being split to the left of her. Meditite strength was no joke.

The tree finally gave way, and it fell on the grass with a thump. Sure, it was a smaller (and deader) tree than others we could’ve chosen, but it was still something. I stared at the fallen thing, my mouth slightly agape. Valérie must’ve seen it.

“It’s only impressive because I’m short now,” she shrugged. “I don’t suppose those things can help cut it?”

She pointed to my stingers at that. They were nowhere near cutting instruments... or at least not without an HM. My silence was the only answer needed. 

“Figures,” she sighed, before grabbing the bottom with both hands. “Let’s go.”

I almost offered my help, but I wasn’t sure of Beedrill’s tree-carrying capabilities. They probably weren’t super strong with arms this thin. Plus, any wrong movement could mean hard, gnarly wood falling on very fragile wings that I couldn’t regain through a new evolution. I couldn’t even get to the group faster to help there since my wings refused to work.

Despite another day here, I still couldn’t do anything. And the thought of that made my blood boil.

* * *

We came back to Micheal, Chloe, and Lola doing some mock sparring, Gab watching anxiously from the side. Chloe was zooming around all this, trying her best to look threatening, but anyone that ended up a Swablu would fail. Every time she tried to pester Lola or Micheal, or to land a light hit, they couldn’t hold back a smile. 

Micheal was apparently still working on his Ember. Even though he was active in the mock battle, he would just stop every couple seconds, still looking like a cat trying to get a hair ball out. Nothing came out, and nothing _had_ come out.

He looked up and finally noticed us. “Woah.”

Again, even though the tree we’d brought over was a thin one, it was an impressive sight when taking all our size changes into account. Lola was the tallest of all of us, yet she barely reached an adult human’s waist. Valérie, who’d done the work, didn’t come up to someone’s _knees_.

I noticed a ring of rocks neatly placed in the centre of the dirt area, some feet away from Valérie and I. As Gab came to put down another one, I realized that she’d been making a makeshift fireplace. Our berry pile had also been meticulously transported to its side, but not close enough that the fire should affect them. It seemed everyone had been trying to help in their own way.

Lola, having spotted the fallen tree, stopped her dance with Chloe to pad over to us. 

“Allow me,” she chuckled. 

She stopped in front of the dead oak and shook out her fur dramatically. Then, she raised her front leg. Her claws started to glow and lengthened. Bearing a grin, she brought them down onto the tree, cutting it almost all the way through. The slice left three gashes, none bleeding with any sap (the tree was dead to begin with, after all). She had another go at it, that last swipe finishing off that part of the tree. 

Lola stood with pride by her handiwork, probably ignoring the fact that she would have to slice way more logs than that. What was that move anyway? Cut? My mind whizzed with thoughts. With us being at a low enough level that I started off as a dang Kakuna, it couldn’t be. Did we have egg moves? TM moves? Was it just Scratch? Yes, it was Scratch. It could only be Scratch. But when did she learn a move? Why did _she_?

“Glad you guys are back before nightfall,” Micheal sighed, sitting down next to me.

I didn’t play nice, and cut straight to the point. “What was your plan, sending me with Valérie? You thought we’d talk things out as if there weren’t any actual problems?”

“What? I didn’t do that on purpose!” He started, before mumbling something else.

I cut him off. “Problem solved! What a fantastic setup, Micheal!” 

“Woah, buddy, please calm down. You were the closest to me, that’s all.” He’d risen up at that, looking pale.

“Have we even managed that Quick Attack? How’s your _fire_ coming along, huh?”

“Um...”

“God, what’s the use of being here if we can’t do anything a human _or_ a Pokémon can do?”

That came out harsher than intended, but it was true. He turned away, and I mirrored the movement. I was instantly aware of the silence around us. The chatter had stopped, the other high school students being drawn to drama like moths to a flame. 

“I...” I started, addressing the rest of the group before me.

I didn’t get to excuse anything. Behind me, I heard a small cough, and then the sound of something light hitting the ground. The tiniest of crackles resounding against the silent forest told me what the source was before I turned around. 

Micheal stood still, staring at the fruit of his work. His mouth was agape with his tongue hanging out, presumably from trying to get the thing out of his system. We got our Ember.

“What are we waiting for?” Gab exclaimed from the fireplace.

Micheal had missed his mark by several yards at least. We’d need to work on that. For now, we had to focus on getting some actual campfire. To that end, half of us took turns nudging it toward its target while Gab frantically filled the fireplace with the bits of sliced wood we had. The small, sparking chunk slowly made its way to it.

“That came out of someone’s mouth,” Lola called after us with disdain.

“So do your words, and we still have to tolerate them,” Valérie yelled at her from some meters from the fireplace, kicking away at the Ember. It was still lit. “We still do, for no good reason.”

Lola laughed and padded toward us right on time for the Ember to reach the dry wood pile. After some careful shuffling the logs around and fanning the thing, smoke took hold. Soon enough, we had an actual fire. And right on time, too. The sun was completely hidden by the hill on top of which we’d slept last night.

Everyone sat down, one by one. I felt the intense heat of the bonfire. It wasn’t just hot, but it was also inducing a deep dryness in the air. The wind took its sweet time blowing smoke in everyone’s face, and I ended up tuning out the conversations that took place around me.

The stars started to dot the sky, a chill seeping into the area as our surroundings darkened. To my right, someone’s stomach rumbled. I glanced in Micheal’s direction for only a second before turning away. It was all I could take after I’d made a complete _fool_ of myself all day. I don’t know if he noticed.

“Kieran, you want to pass me an Oran berry?” He asked in a casual tone.

Sure enough, to my left was the berry pile. I stood up, nudged an Oran berry toward him, and he chomped down with a muffled “thank you”. 

“You think those would be better roasted?” Lola asked, lying down on the opposite side of the pile. “We need s’mores.”

Micheal chuckled. “Which berry do we want to sacrifice?”

I kicked a Chople berry into the fire. With a wave of sudden heat, it burst. The flames reached a height that almost dwarfed the trees. Then, after a few seconds, the blaze shrank back down to its meagre initial size. Thankfully, there hadn’t been any berry equivalent to shrapnel.

“Dear _God_ ,” Valérie said with awe. She palmed another one and readied the throw.

“No! Don’t put in any more!” Gab urged, in a rare moment of word usage. “You’ll burn the wood too fast!”

“Yeah, but it makes it warmer.”

“Valérie, we need this to last all night,” Micheal pleaded.

The argument started again, with Chloe, Micheal, and Gab trying to talk the pyromaniac down, and Lola laughing from the sidelines, chomping down on some Oran berries. Done with fighting for today, I picked up a Persim berry with my mouth and sat down.

When I’d evolved into Beedrill, I’d been giddy beyond belief. A scenario I never thought would happen just did, all on its own. Personally, I would’ve geeked out more if I was sent as a _trainer_ rather than the Pokémon, but I’d take superpowers over some dumb field trip any day. Well, maybe not today anymore. At first, I’d been excited to sting enemies away, or fly. Who hasn’t wanted to fly? I did nearly every time I stared out a school window. Now, all I could think of was how I missed my fingers.

I savoured the berry. It was starting to turn only good as opposed to amazing. I guessed eating nearly one thing for two days would do that. It was still enough to satisfy, though. After the disastrous presentation, my lack of flight, my fights with a stubborn Meditite and a seemingly apathetic Litleo... I needed some relief. Besides, as I saw the still blazing fire under the dark sky, I smiled. We did get one victory for today.


	8. Part 2: Struggle Bug, Chapter 4 (Kieran)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> local kids defy laws of physics, landscape defies them back

More days passed after we got our first bonfire, and after a couple more nights, what else was there to say? Other than a few new berries tasted and moves learned, we started to fall in some kind of weird routine. As much a routine as being a Pokémon could allow, you know. Nothing changed much since the last portal, so why did we bother? Maybe if we kept our attention occupied, we wouldn’t wonder how our families were doing. Was that it? I didn’t know.

It was early morning, early enough that the sun wasn’t up yet. Chloe had nudged me awake a few minutes ago, relieving Gab and herself from their shift. At this point, I didn’t feel like we needed those anyway. There’d been no trace of any Pokémon other than us in this forest. Actually, forget Pokémon; no regular animals or bugs had shown up. The only living beings were us and the plants. We hadn’t even found new notes or another dummy. We were running out of directions to go and look.

We’d kept the camp at PowerPoint Point— what we’d jokingly started to call that one dirt spot with the bonfire. We’d taken to stopping the fire as soon as morning came, so it was out by the time I was woken up. I looked around and noticed that Micheal had already gotten up and left. Maybe Chloe had come to him first. 

I walked closer to the berry pile, now set past the unlit fire pit and on the grass. Close to them was Gab, still awake and working under the dim light of the few stars left. She was doing something with leaves. I didn’t know if it was some sort of camping game, so I got closer. As I did, it looked more and more like something actually intricate. She’d taken down a full frond from the Persim bush and was making patterns with the leaves, the cave notes neatly put aside. It took a second for Gab to notice me next to her, and she jumped, startled.

“Good morning,” she mumbled.

“What are you doing?” I asked, pointing a stinger at her handiwork.

“Oh, this?” Gab replied, before lifting it up. “I learned how to braid palm leaves in seventh grade. Persim leaves are long and sturdy enough for them to be a substitute.”

“... I think I skipped that class.”

“Oh, um, it wasn’t at school,” she said. “It was at church. My mom ran my catechesis group while I was the age for it, so I pretty much had to attend.”

“Ah.”

“Yeah, the woes of growing up Catholic,” she laughed. 

She only got a confused stare back from me, and she started awkwardly fidgeting with her hands, before grabbing the leaves again. This all happened in a few seconds. Was she expecting a laugh or something?

“So, uh, yeah. I know how to do it, and now I’m using it to make a backpack for the notes.”

“And food, I hope?”

“... oh, yeah, food too,” She said, cracking a smile a few moments after. “It’s a lot less time-consuming to make it Emolga-size than human-size, am I right?”

She glanced at me with a hopeful look, and I let out a small, forced laugh. Man, did her jokes ever land? Or make sense? I felt bad for thinking it, but she had a hard time with delivery. She was kind of a tough person to be around. 

“Yeah. Right. Well, your shift is done. You can go to sleep if you want.”

She nodded at that and picked up her frond, heading back toward the sleeping spot. I glanced at the Persim berry pile and jabbed at one with a stinger, reasoning that if I was a Poison type it wouldn’t matter if the berry was affected. It didn’t taste any different than usual. I ate a couple more, walked to a spot next to a tree, and sat down. 

This was my first morning shift; Micheal and I had always ended up getting the first one. I could’ve guessed it was the last shift even if I didn’t know it in advance; the sky was definitely starting to gain a lighter blue tint. Also, thanks to Chloe’s star trick, I noticed that we were close to the right time for dawn. The sun was rising somewhere past the forest, lessening the chill somewhat. 

_One more day here. Will you do anything that doesn’t go straight to the trash?_

I wasn’t one to mull over things, or at least I told myself that. I blamed it on the fact that I now had so much time to think outside of school and video games. Whether I liked them or not, they were a distraction.

There was a haze passing through the forest, the culprit for putting dew on the grass. Humidity clung in the air all around, but came with the inherent cold of mornings. It wasn’t unpleasant— just different than I was used to. I hadn’t been up this early in months.

I glanced over at Micheal. He’d ended up sitting on a dry spot next to a nearby tree, his black fur gaining a sheen under the sun’s pale yellow light. He seemed to be zoned out, staring at the first few sunbeams that filtered through the canopy. He eventually caught my own tired gaze and walked the couple meters between us.

“How’s it going?” He asked, lying down on the grass next to me. He shivered at his side’s contact with the morning dew, but looked fine otherwise.

“Could be better,” I sighed. 

Silence settled in, as per usual with the two of us. Whenever I would go over and talk to him during class, or the rare lunch occasion, I’d had plenty to talk about. Now, however, I’d run out of things to say. Somehow. We’d turned into Pokémon and swapped universes, but it still felt more fun to make jokes about a bad substitute teacher back home. 

“It’s nice out,” he finally said.

“Yeah. Reminds me of camping,” I acquiesced. “You half-expect a deer to pop out any second.”

“Would we have to fight it, you think?” He joked.

I chuckled. “Depends. If it has flowers growing on its horns, I guess?”

“What about that rainbow one that was on the covers a while back?” He stretched, and I started to hear movement behind us. My antennae twitched at the sudden sound.

“Xerneas?” I asked. “That’s a legendary, dude. It would kill us.”

I turned around after that, willing to give my instincts a chance. A familiar Swablu was hopping about closer to us. Her blue feathers were sticking out on one side, as if she’d been lying down.

“I thought your shift was over,” I told her.

“I don’t think I can sleep when it’s so bright out,” Chloe sighed. “Mind if I join you?”

“No problem,” Micheal said.

And so Chloe sat between us. She shook herself out, fluffing up her feathers in the brisk weather. 

I winced, thinking back to the night of my... outburst. That was half a week ago. Time had flown deceptively fast while in here, and a rut had settled in. I was unfortunately not one to call out the status quo.

However, Micheal apparently hated awkward silence and us not moving forward with a passion. He looked at me, then to Chloe, then back to me. He motioned to her with his head and coughed when I didn’t get the hint. I answered his odd behaviour with a shrug and a confused look. I didn’t understand what he was getting at, and Chloe had been spacing out for a while. 

“Wow, the sky’s looking good,” he blurted out.

 _Really?_ Now, that, I couldn’t ignore. Micheal shot an earnest smile my way, which I returned with an automatic eye roll. I had to admit, he had a way of superseding condescension with an impression of honestly wanting to help.

It was enough to make me resign myself to _asking_ for help.

I sighed. “Hey Chloe, can you show me how to fly?”

Chloe couldn’t hide her smile. She turned to Micheal. “Are you good for the rest of the shift?”

“Yeah,” he nodded, laying down on the grass. “If there’s any trouble, Valérie’s over there. She can go yell at it.”

“Okay! Come on, there’s a clearing over there that’s a great spot for takeoff.”

She’d said that as she took off herself, leaving me to wonder if she was deliberately babying me or not. I sighed and ran after her, wings hanging behind me. Hopefully, they wouldn’t just be ornaments by the next hour.

* * *

By the next hour? Ha. At the rate we were going, I’d be lucky to take off by Valentine’s Day. If I’d even stay here for that long. 

We were, as Chloe had announced, on a hill with few trees in our way at the bottom. The idea had been that I could get a longer running start to help with liftoff. I’d been patient enough with Chloe’s quasi-lecture about air currents, flight patterns, and just how sore a bad landing could make you. All of that didn’t matter if my dumb wings didn’t want to work.

The conversation had devolved from somewhat constructive to downright desperate, as Chloe tried to find a solution and I lay down on the grass, having completely given up.

“My wings are where my arms used to be, so I bet it’s easier,” The Swablu said. If she still had said arms, she’d have brought her fist in front of her mouth in thought. “I knew how to move them from memory. We have to figure out where the muscles are, and then focus on them.”

“Focus on them? Just _focus on them_?”

“Kieran—“

“I _tried_ focusing on my wings, and it didn’t work!” I groaned, sitting up and crossing my stingers.

Later, I’d realize Chloe’s patience and be extremely grateful for it. This _angel_ didn’t even sigh or roll her eyes as she continued. “Kieran. When you want to move your arm, you’re actually using your shoulder, pecs and back muscles. That combination working together makes it possible for your arm to move in all the directions it can. Then, to bend your elbow, you’re using the muscles in your upper arm.”

I ignored the fact that Beedrill had twig-like arms that could miraculously stab people without the need for muscle mass. “What are you getting at?” 

“When you lift your arm, you don’t focus on your wrist. So for your wings, you start with where they connect.”

She hopped on my back stinger quicker than I could stop her, and I suddenly felt the soft tip of her wing pressing against the spot right between my shoulder blades. “Try around here.”

This was stupid. I would’ve figured something like that out right when I’d tried. I flexed whatever muscle was at both sides of where Chloe was pointing and—

A twitch.

“Holy crap,” I said.

Chloe let out a gleeful laugh. “They moved! They moved!”

I barely registered what Chloe said after that. I only saw her bring her wings up and bringing herself above the trees at the bottom of the hill. There was nothing left to do but accept the invitation to follow her. I ran, leaving a quarter of the hill to myself as liftoff room, jumped, and willed my wings to start beating.

I was not prepared for how flight would feel.

I _t blew my mind_. I ascended fast, taking care to avoid branches above me. It wasn’t weightlessness, it was also super-speed that let you go on the X, Y _and_ Z axes. I’d somehow never thought of just how fast something as mundane as a seagull was. Flight was just that fast in and of itself.

A wall of wind hit me as soon as I was above the tree line. I steadied myself and rode through the air currents, the soft buzz of my wings audible when the winds let down a little. I now flew with complete freedom in the direction we were supposed to head toward. Glee wasn’t even a good enough word for what I felt. I laughed and laughed, Chloe doing the same above me. I always thought Icarus was stupid for wanting to reach the sun, but now I completely understood him. As high as my wings would allow was also how high I wanted to go.

I spotted some landmarks along the way.

“You see that stump there?” I shouted to Chloe. 

“Yeah?” She answered, in a voice I knew was straining but was barely above the wind.

“That’s the tree Valérie tore down,” I yelled back.

Indeed, there it was! I was surprised to see it so clearly. Chloe had Swablu eyes to help, but I hadn’t even considered that Beedrill would have great long-distance eyesight as well, since I’d only seen enclosed areas so far. 

Chloe and I had gone so fast it was insane. Sure, it took effort, and I knew my back would be sore the next day, but we’d covered in two minutes the walk Valérie and I had done in an hour. We flew past the tree, going farther than what the entire group had seen before. 

As fun and exhilarating as it was, I started to get an eerie feeling of dread building up within me. It was like looking at a bad drawing of someone and not seeing what was off, but knowing _something_ was. I couldn’t explain it. At least, I couldn’t until I noticed where the trees ended.

They just stopped, and so did the land. Way up in the sky, it was obvious the horizon line wasn’t there. Somewhere along the forest, everything stopped and all that remained was an endless void. I only saw that happen to our left, but I had a feeling that if we maneuvered closer to the center of the forest, we’d see it from all sides. Wherever we were, it was a finite level.

I’d stopped moving to hover in place. It didn’t take long for Chloe to approach me, but she still had to fly circles around me to stay in the air. I guess there was a hidden advantage to Beedrill flight.

“You see that too, right?” She asked. The wind was still screeching in my antennae, but not nearly as loud as before.

“That out-of-bounds glitch waiting to happen? Yeah, I do. We should check it out—“

A hum made itself known. It started as a ringing noise, but grew in volume until it became close to unbearable. I had to land _now_. Poor Chloe looked the same as I felt when I opened my eyes. The sound had mutated into more than that; I was starting to see a vivid picture in my mind’s eye.

I remember making contact with a branch and gripping it tightly, but not much else. My wings stopped beating, jutting straight out in a tense position. My eyes were closed, but I saw something clear as day. An orange dog padded over to the end of the world and hesitantly put a claw against it. The wall almost looked made of crystal, with transparent planes that stopped anything from entering. I only recognized the dog as a Growlithe when it started to dematerialize. It just got broken down to its essential pixels and got sucked into the out of bounds area, leaving no trace behind. That was creepy enough, but the noises it made... it was scared to death. The second the Growlithe buzzed out of existence, it left me with the scenery it left behind— a thick jungle with dark green leaves and purple puddles. 

“Okay, we won’t go!” I yelled. 

And then it was quiet. I opened my eyes to find our forest back in full. The sun, now near its zenith, filtered through the canopy to the undergrowth some twenty feet below me. Chloe was perched on a tree right next to me. I finally let go of my branch, sitting up as best I could. The branch wobbled with my movement, but I was fine with any sensation that brought me back to the here and now.

“The hell was that?” Was all I could say.

“That poor Growlithe...” Chloe said, trembling. “I don’t know.”

“I guess something’s telling us not to go out of bounds,” I continued. “Message received!”

There was no sign that anything heard us. No new breeze, no other vision, no... voice. Call me silly and hopeful, but it would’ve been reassuring to know that the thing that put us here at least understood us. As of then, I just didn’t know. 

We flew down to the grass. I fudged the landing and fell on my knees. My attempts to get back up were fruitless. It felt _heavy_ to be on the ground again. I resigned myself to trying again when I’d caught my breath.

“What’s that, though?” Chloe asked, breaking the silence.

“So it’s contacting _you_ —“

“No! Gosh, no,” Chloe answered. “I meant _that_.”

I looked away from the ground to face the trees in the direction Chloe was pointing to with her wing. Past the trees, there looked to be a clearing. And just past that was...

“A giant hive?” I asked. 

Chloe nodded. Sure enough, that’s what it looked like. We’d seen smaller ones up in the trees, but this one was nearly the size of an average human adult. To be more specific, it resembled a paper wasp’s nest; even from where I stood, I could recognize the rough texture I’d seen on some nature documentary.

I took a step forward, but Chloe fluttered and landed just in front of me.

“What if we’re not supposed to?” She asked.

I put my sarcasm to use, hoping something would hear me and then tell me if I was being an idiot. “ _Boy_ , I sure want to head to that hive and possibly fight a monster! Anything wrong with that?”

Chloe tensed next to me. No vision or sign came forward. She sighed in relief and I shrugged, but internally, I was groaning. Again, communicating would’ve been nice, but there was no answer. Maybe whatever had sent the vision had stopped listening... or it wanted us to keep going forward. I chose the latter. If we wanted to press on, though, we’d need reinforcements.

* * *

I came back to the satisfying sight of Valérie getting hit in the back of the head by a stray Ember. The pile of sticks a few meters away— the initial target— had remained untouched, but dark burn marks covered the surrounding ground. Micheal’s aim was clearly not improving, but I felt fine with it for now.

“Ow!” The Meditite shouted. “Watch it! That could’ve gone in my eye!”

“I’m so sorry!” He exclaimed.

I landed, making sure to hover in place before stopping my wings and dropping the last couple feet between the ground and I. Thankfully, I stayed upright for that one.

“Grab some Oran berries, you’ll be fine,” I told Valérie. “Get a Rawst too.”

“Why?” She groaned.

“It’s the one for burns,” Chloe added, landing next to me.

She sighed and threw her hands up. “Yeah, makes sense.”

“Nice landing, by the way,” Chloe whispered to me, nudging my leg with her wing.

As Valérie made her way to Lola and Gab, asking which berries even were Rawst, Chloe and I gave our report. Didn’t have much of a choice; Micheal barrelled over to us.

“So you learned to fly—“

“Micheal, we found something,” I interrupted, with more intensity than I’d intended.

He looked taken aback. “...What was it? A portal?”

“No,” Chloe replied. “We think it might lead to one, though.”

I elaborated. “It’s this giant hive we found. It’s gotta have a boss in it.”

“If the monster dungeon theory’s correct,” Chloe quickly added.

Micheal looked from side to side, then back to us. “Got it. We’ll get everyone together and gather supplies.”

“Supplies? How?” I asked.

All he answered with was a flick of his tail as he walked toward the rest of our group. 

Past the fireplace and near the berry pile, Valérie sat, putting berries into something I hadn’t seen in a while: a container. Lo and behold, the frond backpack was actually done! I saw a glimpse of the notes at the bottom and briefly hoped that the berries wouldn’t stain them. Gab was only now finishing up the straps, and once they were tight and sturdy enough, she put the braided bag on her back and lifted it.

_That was some perfect timing._

“Let’s pick up the pace, people,” Micheal declared, the Litleo leading the charge.

Lola, who’d been laying down next to the backpack station, lifted her head and begrudgingly followed at the back of the group. 


	9. Part 2: Struggle Bug, Chapter 5 (Kieran)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> *insert Mothra reference here*

The trek was longer than anticipated, but our stamina had increased since the bus crash. Whether or not Pokémon bodies had anything to do with it, I was sure we’d made enough ground to cover the trip from home to the fort all without wheels.

It must’ve been noon when clouds gathered overhead. A big, white blanket covered the sky, dulling the forest and sending a chill up my spine. Before I knew it, rain had started to fall. I groaned. The grass hadn’t even dried from the dew!

“Can we stop?” Lola asked, gazing up at the clouds and blinking a droplet away.

“And get home later?” Valérie responded. “Nope. We’re not stopping so you can be lazy again.”

The Absol shot her a glare. “Hey. Maybe I’m concerned about facing the boss battle in this weather. You don’t know.”

“Again with the boss battle—“

“What stops the boss from showing up _here_?” Micheal asked.

We’d (somewhat embarrassingly) not given much thought as to _how_ we were brought to the levels to begin with. At least, I hadn’t. Talking about it like that kind of made it real, and as soon as it was, we’d start to get homesick all over again.

Lola was the first to speak up. “Last time, it spawned when we entered the last room. Not a second before.”

“Yeah,” I continued. “And we didn’t go into the hive’s... aggro zone.”

I fidgeted with my stingers. As much of a video games fan as I was, I hadn’t had much experience with using that term. 

“You and Chloe came pretty close, though,” Micheal said. “It might be enough for it to count.”

Even Lola looked concerned after that. Micheal looked around to assess the rain. It was only a drizzle at the most. The rest of us didn’t put up much of a fight when he strongly suggested we press on. Waiting out a bit of rain didn’t seem worth risking facing an enemy unprepared.

Shortly after, I saw the hive peering through the gaps in the trees. The clearing was close. I took a second to double-check Gab’s backpack. The Emolga was practically carrying her own weight in berries, and that was reassuring.

The silence was thick, the only sound being the rain and wind rustling the trees. I looked around my group of classmates and they did the same. No words were exchanged, just some nods. Then we walked in.

As soon as we entered, a static-like buzz filled the clearing. That sound had also started with the Smeargle fight. I put my wings and stingers up. At the base of the hive, a mess of red pixels spawned right after a flash of white.

As it had done last time, the mass settled on a concrete shape in a matter of seconds. It looked shorter than me until something from its back sprouted, dwarfing its body completely. The shape got more and more specific as red pixels were shaved away bit by bit.

It shed its final layer of pixels, revealing a fuzzy, purple body, blue limbs, and wide wings that started flapping the moment they were freed.

The Butterfree flew up high. Red pixels poured out its mouth and eyes, blocking them from view. 

“Talk about pinkeye,” I mumbled. This visual still disturbed me to no end.

“Gab, is there any chance of you knowing an electric move yet?” Micheal asked, snapping us back to a battle mindset.

“Um...”

I cut her off. “Got it, you’ll be berry support. Get the Orans ready.”

She nodded, and I turned back to the Butterfree. Little did I know, it was ready for us far faster than the Smeargle. 

It flapped its wings fast, creating a whirlwind to knock us off-balance. I spread my wings and used it as a lift. Even through the small amount of practice I’d gotten with Chloe, I’d learned to wrangle currents if I kept myself focused. I had Pokémon instincts to thank for that. 

I flew close to the thing, arm stingers brought forward. I wasn’t quite ready to try attacking with the back stinger— too much weight shift in midair. I tried to stab its side, but the Butterfree nimbly dodged the hit. That thing was faster than what its large wings implied. 

I fell a little, disoriented from the momentum of my attack. Those stingers were about half my body weight. I caught myself a few feet down from where I’d been. When I’d regained my breath, I turned back toward the Butterfree. 

It had wasted no time, flapping its wings to maximum speed and sending the rest of my team flying. Maybe that was Gust? I’d looked over just in time to see Micheal painfully hit a tree at the edge of the clearing. It looked to be a damaging move. 

Micheal regained footing and started hacking up an Ember, or at least I hoped so. The Butterfree’s eyes shifted from him to Chloe, who’d also just gotten back up. Once set on her, they didn’t seem to budge. I didn’t predict this when strategizing, but our enemy almost seemed aware of type matchups and wanted to eliminate that threat first.

I grunted, readying another stinger attack. Bad move. At the sound, the Butterfree turned to me, with an almost smug look.

It shot a colourful beam at me! Was it Psybeam? Before I could evade, or even feel the pain of the hit, my thoughts became scrambled. I heard yells from around me, but words morphed into foreign noises. My sight went so out the window I could only see spirals. The ground and I had made contact sometime between now and then, and I barely noticed it. I tried to steady myself, but just ended up stumbling. I was on the brink of giving up on trying, when a familiar sweet taste brought me back to the world of the living. I regained enough senses to at least stop myself from thrashing. I felt like my head had been steamrolled. I now understood how you could lose so much HP from a purely mental psychic attack. Not to mention it was super effective against me...

My eyesight clear again, I realized Gab was right in front of me, shoving what must’ve been a Persim berry down my throat. 

“Are you back?” She asked firmly.

I was honestly taken aback by her tone, but shook the rest of the confusion out of my head. “Yeah. How’s the Butterfree?”

She didn’t need to answer, my eye flying to the battle scene instantly. Micheal spat a couple Embers in the Butterfree’s direction, but all missed their target. Most were left smouldering against the wet grass, if not extinguished already. Above, Chloe swooped in and out of the Butterfree’s range, trying to land a physical hit. With her speed, she might’ve managed to do that while I was out, but it wasn’t showing now. The Butterfree was momentarily distracted, though, so that was a plus. Meanwhile, I still wasn’t over the fact that this overrated purple butterfly was taller than both a Swablu and a Litleo. 

I got up, wings shaking off the few drops of water I’d collected from the grass. They were fine to fly, so I took off. 

The stupid thing shot another Psybeam at me, but I saw it coming early enough to dodge it. Live and learn. My eye followed the path of the beam, only to see it reach Valérie.

The Psybeam hit her full force, but she barely even flinched. Ricochets hit the ground and ripped chunks of grass away. Meanwhile, she stayed in a stable battle stance, fists up and feet planted on the ground. It might’ve been from her karate training. I knew Valérie was the headstrong one, but this was ridiculous. At that point, I’d have to commend it after the battle.

My back was starting to hurt from the continued strain flying caused. Beedrill were not migratory, that much was obvious.

I landed next to Gab and Lola, the latter casually sitting down, watching the battle with interest.

“What are you doing?” I asked, accepting an Oran berry Gab passed to me.

“I’m learning. Chill”, she answered. “I can’t reach that thing. What else do I do?”

“Well, you’re a Dark type”, Gab started.

I swallowed my Oran berry. “Oh my God, you’re a Dark type!”

“Ugh, what do I have to _do_?” Lola groaned.

“The rainbow beams are Psychic attacks”, I said. “You’re immune to them. If you stand in front of the target, you can probably nullify the damage.”

Lola turned to Gab, possibly for assistance. She rolled her eyes as the Emolga hastily looked away, and got up. I started up my wings again, the pain in my back completely gone.

I scrutinized the Butterfree for any weak spots, or just one way of hitting it. I didn’t see any, and I had an untrained eye for it. One of Micheal’s Embers almost reached it, but it moved away without a care in the world.

I got so focused on the Butterfree that I didn’t notice the blur of blue and white sneaking up on it. It soared at great speeds, talons outstretched.

And it hit its mark.

I heard the scratch from meters away. It was a soft sound, but sharp and intense. Shiny wing scales joined the falling raindrops.

 _Chloe_ had landed a hit before anyone else.

With the mix of thrill and panic that accompanied the battle, I didn’t have time to sulk. My mind didn’t start comparing me to a competent member of our team, and instead flooded with confidence. 

If someone else could land a hit, it meant the thing was _hittable_. That was all that mattered.

I flew to the Butterfree, both arm stingers at the ready. I caught it by surprise... but didn’t strike anything except the air. Those thick, bulky wings made it a deceptively adept dodger.

Each second came with another dodged attack. The weight of my stingers was starting to wear on my arms. Wasn’t Beedrill supposed to be built for this kind of thing? What was I doing wrong? If I had to find the muscle where the wings attached to beat them... I had to find the move trigger before the move. I focused on my frustration and tried to find a spark there. I pushed for something to happen, but my intention and emotions ground against each other, incompatible. 

Until, suddenly, it clicked. 

Stab after jab, each became faster than the last. I barely noticed the glow coming from my stingers. Fury Attack was here late, but it was here with a vengeance. I grazed the dumb butterfly’s head, then struck a hand.

I grinned as I managed to knock the Butterfree back a bit. Hell, it was satisfying to just distract it. Its attacks had stopped momentarily.

The rush stopped, and I felt my stingers weigh on me again. I heard the telltale sound of a Psybeam ring out. It was almost like a typical laser beam charge-up sound effect.

I avoided the beam just in time... and saw Valérie face it in full past where I was. 

“Whoops,” Lola said from twenty feet away.

Valérie’s grunt was so rough you could cut your hand on it. 

_Ugh, forget about her._

I returned my attention to the Butterfree, only to be faced with a strong wind. The boss battle was back on, and the briefly weakened Butterfree flapped its wings as angrily as all hell. That Gust caught me of guard, sending me tumbling to the wet grass. I regained my bearings quickly, not letting my wings get crushed. 

As I looked up again, I was suddenly aware of a change in the area. Like a flip was switched, beams of sunlight burst through a gap in the clouds. The Butterfree seemed to notice this and its head jerked toward them. How it could see with the endless stream of pixels, I had no clue.

Its assault of attacks stopped, but the rain persisted in spite of the sunshine. The Butterfree stood in place as well as it could when in midair. Its eyes were tightly shut, as if concentrating. It wasn’t until I saw tiny balls of light combining in the Butterfree’s hands that I realized what we were dealing with. 

“That thing knows Solar Beam?!” I exclaimed.

If there was one thing I knew, it was that we were _not_ equipped to handle a move with a power of 120. It theoretically needed a good amount of sunlight, but what counted as sunny weather? Surely not this, as there was still rain and the Butterfree had to charge its attack. But then, what amounted to a turn when we were having a fight in real time? How much time did we have to get away?

I exchanged a glance with Micheal, and I could tell we were both very aware of the danger. Good to know some Pokémon Red memories had caught up with him. He got his current Ember out of his system and sounded the order.

“Retreat!”

All available bodies ran past the edge of the clearing, a few meters into the trees. I made it second, just after Chloe. Judging by everyone’s faces, we all questioned the logic of the plan. It was what we had, though. It didn’t matter if the fight hadn’t ended. We just needed to last out the Solar Beam. Only one person remained on the battlefield. It was Valérie, still standing in the dead centre. Micheal ran to her and I stared, dumbfounded. 

“What are you doing?” I yelled when I’d regained my senses. “Get out of there!”

Micheal even tried pushing her toward the edge of the clearing. She wouldn’t budge.

As my mind raced to find a solution, I analyzed exactly _what_ she was doing. Her eyes darted from side to side, but her stance remained still. It wasn’t Valérie not moving, it was her not being able to. It seemed even though her mind wanted to leave, the rest of her was determined to stay in place and take-

_And take the hits._

“Micheal, get away from her!” I yelled. 

“Why?” He wheezed out. Judging from the state of the Litleo, _God_ , Valérie was firmly planted.

My wings twitched, and before I could tell them to do anything, they opened up and propelled me forward. I grabbed Micheal and pivoted on the spot, now facing Lola, Chloe and Gab. They were about ten meters away, at the edge of the clearing. Valérie stood just inches from me. 

I flew in the direction opposite the Butterfree and landed with the others. I couldn’t apologize to Valérie before a flash of white engulfed her, then the still-concentrating Butterfree. I heard a huge rumble, and prayed I’d be out of range by the time the attack started.

I outflew the hit, landing and dropping Micheal past the tree line. When I looked back, I had to squint. It seemed the entire field was filled with white light, and even from my position I could feel the heat emanating from it. The blast radius was more than I’d anticipated, and it took some time for the light to finally dissipate. 

There was no fire, but there might as well have been. Grass had been razed to the ground, scorch marks covering the latter. Standing in a crater stood Valérie, smoke billowing around her. I expected to see at least some red pixels remaining from the Butterfree, but there wasn’t a speck left of it. Valérie’s attack had completely _obliterated_ the thing.

“Woohoo!” Valérie cheered, looking like she’d just come out of an explosion. I mean, she did, after all. “Meditite vs evil Pokémon: 2-0!”

She laughed with relief and righteous vengeance, the sound carried through the forest air. Adrenaline had caught up with her before the pain could take her out. We caught up with her once the threat was gone. And there was no debating it was _gone_.

“What was that move?” Micheal asked, having somewhat regained his breath. 

“It has to be Bide,” Chloe said, hopping up and down excitedly. “Valérie, you just inflicted twice the damage you got onto the Butterfree!”

Valérie laughed at that, clenching her fists. “So we’ve got a strategy for the next battle!”

There was a lull in the conversation as the others realized that two levels was criminally low of a challenge. Even with humans turning into Pokémon and being yanked away from our home for a week, it seemed too easy. Maybe the third monster battle was the charm? Meanwhile, I was still a bit woozy from the fight and the whole confusion shenanigan, so it took me a while to register how flawed Valérie’s plan was. When I finally did...

“No!” I burst out laughing, still high from the same adrenaline. “Bide’s, like, the worst move in the game! It has payoff, sure, but it makes you a sitting duck for two turns!”

There was a mumble to my right, just quiet enough that I couldn’t decipher the words: Gab’s usual language. I rolled my eyes and turned to her.

“Can you say that again?” I asked.

She pursed her lips before relaxing and repeating her previous statement. “Doesn’t mean much for it to be the worst in the game if we’re not in a game.”

Call me romantic, but it was then that something clicked in my brain. This world might’ve been set on the rules of Pokémon, but it didn’t give a crap about whether or not the inhabitants followed those rules. I would need to rely on everyone as much as they’d need my ability to rattle on all Pokémon types. Was I willing to admit it, though? Nah.

“Some things are gonna come to us more naturally than others,” I said, “but we are in a video game world, and that’s final.”

As with the last level, we heard a hum coming from the edge of the clearing. The hive tore itself open, purple light piercing through the cracks until it opened completely. When it was done, another portal had appeared, with a swirling mix of purple and black inside.

“Not the most inviting,” Gab said.

“Beggars can’t be choosers,” Valérie sighed. “Let’s go in.”

We all gave a fervent nod (in spite of our collective exhaustion) and walked toward the creepy structure. One by one, in an almost ceremonial manner, my classmates went.

“See you on the other side,” Micheal said, padding to the portal entrance.

I looked around the formerly grassy clearing, taking in the tall trees around it and tiny hives that adorned them. The rain had finally stopped, leaving the sun to give all the wet leaves a pleasant shine. It was weird for this place to be quiet after the whole Butterfree shenanigan. Without Micheal around, there’d only be Valérie and I left. The Meditite was also off getting closure on this place, staring down the trees with her hands on her hips.

“Oh. I see what you’re doing,” I realized, stopping Micheal in his tracks.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Time for me to settle scores. Well, too bad for you. I was gonna do it _anyway_. I have matured.”

“...I think you’re projecting.”

“Yeah,” I winked. “I totally know what that means.”

He got a confused expression on his face before tilting his head and sighing. He left us after that. After he went into the portal, Valérie and I stayed behind. A full minute passed before either of us said anything. She avoided my eye until I started to walk.

“Hey, Kieran?” She shot out.

I turned my head toward her. “Yeah?”

Her gaze went to me, now unflinching. “About the last battle...”

I braced myself. Yes, I had felt ready to make amends, but the few moments before I’d have to make myself vulnerable felt interminable.

“It was... freaky, having your body not responding to anything except pain.”

“Uh...”

“I should’ve said sorry,” she admitted. “About the Smeargle thing.”

Oh. I didn’t expect that to be brought up, especially right after I’d left her out for her Bide. That was... an apology in lieu of another apology? It didn’t have to be _in lieu_.

“... Thanks,” I said. “Now I’ll say sorry that I left you out there against the Butterfree with no backup. Sorry.”

She nodded, a slight smirk on her face. “Well, at least, we had luck on our side.”

That was actually a comforting thought. Was that Bide a pure stroke of luck? It seemed that way since it only kicked in at the perfect time for it to. In a world where we were way out of the water, it was nice to have something looking out for us, even if it was an intangible, unprovable concept.

“Do we know how long portals like this stay open?” Valérie asked, breaking the silence again.

That straightened us out, and we made a mad scramble for what could be our only door to the human world. We thankfully both made it in, the portal showing no signs of closing anytime soon. Whether or not our fears were founded, I didn’t want to risk it. 

Clearly this thing wasn’t over yet, but hell if we didn’t hope we could make it out soon.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And here we are, at the end of the second part! Don’t forget to leave a comment if you made it this far ;)


	10. Part 3: Dark of the Night, Chapter 1 (Lola)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> New level entered. Spooky stuff.

An adventure nonetheless, huh? That’s what the me from then would’ve thought of the whole caper. Something to keep me from homework was always welcome. 

But maybe not this time. This time, my surroundings got the slightest bit unsettling right off the bat. I’d landed straight into the unknown.

All I could see, all around me, was darkness. A cold breeze wafted through the area. With the temperature and lack of light, it felt like I was deep in a swirling black hole. I liked it. It felt like closing my eyes and ending the real nightmare that was life. How soothing it was...

Okay, no, it wasn’t. Actually, the fact that I couldn’t see was pretty worrying. I’d been able to make things out okay with my new glowing demon eyes throughout the other levels, so this was a new level of dark. I felt my fur bristle from the chill. I wanted to get out of here. Life could take me back. I didn’t care about edge for edge’s sake, I wanted to be warm. 

As with the last portal, I’d landed standing up. I swivelled around, looking for anyone who’d also fallen here. All I could hear was the sound of waves. It sounded muffled, yet I could hear my breath clear as day. 

... It was a bit too clear and loud, in fact. I realized I could’ve been in an enclosed surface. I tested the theory and lifted my head, letting my scythe feel around the above area. I felt it scrape across a hard ceiling. Patting around myself with alternating paws, I discovered that I was completely surrounded by a solid, oval wall.

Was there a glitch? If we were stuck in a video game, there would have to be a problem at some point. Now, if only we could find a speedrun manual...

Before I could finish that thought, I heard an odd sound, like a cross of an eggshell cracking and sand flowing down an hourglass. When I started seeing again, I realized my prison was dissolving. Hopefully it wouldn’t take me with it. 

Muffled voices from outside became clearer, and I recognized them as belonging to my classmates. The walls faded away, leaving me with a scenery almost as dark as before. Although, for me, almost as dark had become as bright as morning light. I squinted at the contrast as the wall around me continued to crumble away. I then took a step out, taking in a gulp of air.

This caught the attention of the group, all of them standing a few meters away. They’d been on a small hill a bit above me... probably where they landed in the first place. Chloe in particular jumped when she registered me in her sight, and flew to my head. 

“There you are!” She said. I quickly shook her off, having her land on the gravel in front of me. 

I grinned. “Well, you guys weren’t going to leave without me.”

“Because that would’ve been _such_ a bummer,” Valérie said, rolling her eyes. Kieran nudged her scoldingly with his elbow, but he was clearly holding back a smirk.

Soon enough the whole gang had come over to me, walking over the slightly wet gravel to do so. I sat down with an audible shuffle from the tiny rocks. The low sound of waves also reached my ear. A dark sea stretched out on my right, meeting a black sky dotted with stars on the horizon line.

“So were you just hanging out here then?” Kieran asked. “Or maybe you went for a swim?”

“Nah, I was in the void, I think.”

While I’d played it off as a casual misadventure, Kieran and Chloe stiffened at that. 

“The... void?” The Swablu chirped weakly.

“Uh, I don’t know,” I answered, looking around and stopping when I’d spotted something. “Oh, I was in one of those.”

I pointed a claw at some objects that were definitely not in the last dungeon. Odd bubbles of darkness lay before us, as far as the horizon stretched. Some were even on the lake. There were constantly new ones added, starting out as tiny dots and expanding to the size of the one that contained me. The ones big enough stayed that way for a seemingly short amount of time, only to slowly dissolve afterward.

“You were... you were _in_ one of those things?” Micheal gasped.

“Huh. Yup.”

“And you’re not hurt or anything?” Chloe asked.

I shrugged, and that seemed to reassure her somewhat. She let out a breath, the sound joining the waves. It didn’t even take a second for her to regain that usual glint in her eyes. You could always count on Chloe to bounce back into cheerfulness in record speeds. That was her role. We all had one, and I liked seeing the tropes play out.

Our life _had_ devolved into a fanfic of sorts. I hadn’t read much in terms of _Pokémon_ fanfic, but I could recognize my situation enough through extensive ‘research’ on fanfiction.net : we’d been plucked from our world by some teenage author who wished to live vicariously through characters, with a heaping load of wish fulfillment dumped upon us. Most of the fulfillment hadn’t been reached, per se, but I was okay with being on the ride. That hypothetical insecure freshman needed to get the angst out first.

Could’ve used more imagination, though. My group wasn’t exactly complicated. Kieran was a nerd. Micheal was basic. Chloe was happy all the time. Valérie would fight anyone. And I, of course, was the edgy protagonist.

That was everyone, right?

Gab finally caught up to the group, having been slowed down by the weight of her backpack. Man, the slippery rocks did not do any favours to an unsteady Emolga who couldn’t fly. She let out a wheeze as she finally stopped.

“Okay, we’ve got everybody!” Micheal announced. “Let’s get a move on!”

“Wait, are you okay?” Chloe asked, obviously concerned for the flying squirrel.

Micheal turned back around, sharing the same look. Gab nodded, still hunched over. A thumbs up from her was all the extra info Chloe and Micheal needed, though.

“Let’s pick up the pace, then,” he said with that smile no one could get mad at. 

... Well, maybe we could that night. After all, we’d been walking all day _and_ had fought a giant butterfly. It was officially illegal to keep walking after sundown, portal time zones be damned. Our groans were so in sync that we could’ve started a choir of disappointment.

“What’s wrong with a bit more scouting?” Micheal insisted.

“It sucks, that’s what,” Kieran said. “We can’t see anything, dude.”

“Also, it’s _night_ , dummy,” Valérie added, the Meditite crossing her arms. Hoo boy, they were crossed. Micheal was in trouble. “We’re going to mess up our schedules.”

“Oh, dear _God_ , not our sleeping schedules,” I lamented, my voice dripping with sarcasm. “This place can’t take _more_ things away from us.”

This was met with silence, as were most of my amateur standup attempts. I’d gotten used to it enough that the blows just glanced off me. I let the conversation resume.

“Right,” Kieran continued. “Look, I know it isn’t the first thing to worry about, but I’d say we need to adjust to the time zone.”

Micheal’s ears flicked as Kieran and Valérie kept pelting him with counterarguments. I would’ve liked to add to it, but honestly, I would’ve just said I wanted to sleep.

“We’re acting like when my family went to France,” Chloe whispered to me. 

“Well, it was nice for us to have a trip to the ether,” I told her, leaning my head down to Swablu height. “Think we’ll find a hotel?”

She laughed at that, and when I brought my head back up, Micheal was nodding along to Kieran and Valérie’s suggestions. His light gray-tipped tail swished in mild annoyance, but the rest of him seemed to have accepted the idea to stop and rest.

“Fine. It’s night. We should sleep. We may not know the area, but having two people on watch should cover things okay. Kieran and I will take first shift, then Lola and Valérie, then Chloe and Gab. Sound good?”

“First shift again?” Kieran whispered to him. Micheal shot him a look, and Kieran shrugged and sighed.

Micheal reprised, exasperation clear in his voice this time. “Yeah, if that’s okay with everyone?” 

Nods were exchanged, and Micheal let out a sigh. I had another objection, but I let it slide because the poor Litleo looked so tired. Even I had a limit. It didn’t stop me from mulling over it, though. I regretted how we arranged the shift team-ups. I wasn’t looking forward to _another_ shift with Valérie. Talk about awkward silence or constant arguing with no in-between whatsoever.

Whatever. I’d deal with it when they woke me up. I laid myself down on the hard rock, which was a step down from the grass in the last level. That, and we didn’t have anything to sustain a bonfire. _Whatever_. We’d be back home soon enough.

* * *

Pokémon slept weird. They didn’t have normal dreams. At home, at the very most, I’d get a good non-sequitur adventure and forget all about it in the morning. Sometimes, I’d use the visuals for my drawings, but I would have to add a lot to them because my mind’s eye wasn’t vivid. Here, however, dreams were either clear and intense or didn’t show at all. There was no in-between.

The arrival of colour in what had so far been a grayscale wasteland was jarring. The lack of colour when I was awake was weird, because I knew I’d seen Pokémon games in colour before. We must’ve been stuck in one of the old ones, if that made any sense.

I dreamed of unstable grounds. No matter what my mind showed me, there was an unsettling feeling throughout all the flashes. What made it worse was that they were _only_ flashes. I could barely make out details before the scenes in front of me were taken away one by one, a millisecond at a time. 

Laughter from... another place. From somewhere I can’t reach and should never be able to. Fire thrown at a friend. A fall. A weak chirp from someone hurt, resounding against cold cavern walls. A white face encased in green, splitting its fang-filled grin with bouts of maniacal shrieking. Falling rocks with no ground to collide with. 

Deep red eyes that glowed, eerily watching us and stalking away in the darkness. 

All the while, I couldn’t focus. It was too much information to process. Did I have enough time to even realize I was scared? 

... Well, if I didn’t, it didn’t count.

* * *

I woke up to my side being rudely prodded with a lion paw. I suppressed the jolt of surprise that came with it, then groaned and stretched, not even giving Micheal the courtesy of looking at him yet. It was too early.

“Ugh, _what_?”

“You need to wake up,” he said quickly.

“My turn already?” I cut him off, opening my eyes to the dark sky. “It doesn’t even look like it’s changed.”

“Which is exactly why I woke you up,” he stated.

“Eh?”

At that, I sat up, rubbing the sleep out of my eyes with a careful front paw, and tried to get my white fur down from standing on end. It wasn’t nearly as dramatic as with Chloe fluffing up, but I didn’t feel like dealing with it for long. The rest of the group was also up, to varying degrees of grogginess. Micheal and Kieran looked the most alert, but Micheal in particular was still grumpy. If I didn’t know better, I’d have thought that he was angry that he’d drawn the short straw to wake me up. He turned to address everyone else.

“The stars haven’t moved one degree since the shift started.”

Valérie was barely a step away from murdering him for the crime of waking her up. “How do you know?”

Kieran cocked his head, looking like he was going to lecture her, but then blinked away the thought. “We counted. Over a thousand seconds later and the two Big Dipper stars are still straight above the North Star.” 

They’d counted to a _thousand_. That was something I would pounce on in an instant usually, but for some reason, I didn’t that time. Maybe it was post-waking grumpiness. It was potent within the group, after all.

“That means... it’s not night,” Micheal announced.

Oh, the smug guy just loved being proven right.

“I mean... it’s not night, or day! And we don’t have anything to measure time with!”

“Then let’s get out of here as soon as we can,” Valérie said, getting up.

“But we need to keep going— oh,” Micheal interrupted. Guess he wasn’t used to people going with his plan, at this point. 

It didn’t go without at least one interjection, however. It was like a law of nature.

Kieran spoke up, raising his stinger. “Let me at the Persim first, though. I’m starving.”

Instead of the eye roll I’d suspected, Micheal nodded and padded to Gab’s berry backpack with Kieran. Not a second later, the bag fell over. A Persim berry rolled out. It was so far the only one I could pick out by name.

“Oh, shoot, did I rip it or something?” Kieran said, lifting the object as well as he could with his stingers.

“It’s fine! It’s fine!” The Emolga reassured from the side. “It just looks like the top flap was open. I couldn’t make a latch for it.”

Kieran nodded and picked up the Persim berry that had rolled out of the bag. Valérie and the others took their pick and I made my way to it. 

“What’s left? Hit me.”

Gab shuffled around in her backpack and pulled out a... round berry. The sweet one, not the hot one with the hole in it. She handed it to me, and I almost chomped off her hand. She flinched and looked to the side before shooting me a look that conveyed one thought.

_“Really?”_

I swallowed the chewed remains of the berry. “What? They’re good.”

Now that I had something in my stomach, it was good a time as ever to start walking again.


	11. Part 3: Dark of the Night, Chapter 2 (Lola)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ever start a cult?

The path was long with far-spanning stretches of water on either side. As we trekked on, I got flashbacks to the first level. Sure, we weren’t in an enclosed space anymore, and there was only one direction to go into, but with how everyone stuck so close to each other... might as well be the cave maze. I wasn’t claustrophobic, so it didn’t matter to me back then. If anything, it was more annoying now because it was so _obvious_ to me where we were going. Thank Poké-God for the Dark type night vision.

The only other Pokémon in the group that held a candle to Absol in those terms was Micheal. The fire lion walked next to me, both of us leading the squad. As far as I could tell, the others could see as well as a person could at dusk. I could only guess, though. Absol vision was about the same, day or night. Gab’s Flash had run out a few hours ago so everyone else just had to deal.

While no one had gone into the dark water for a swim, we’d taken several water breaks. Pokémon bodies had been durable enough so far, and there was no debate left in us concerning water and its drinking safety. The water here lacked the salty tang of the ocean, so it was some kind of far-spanning lake. It didn’t make any difference. Even my night vision couldn’t make out anything on the other side. Who knows? Maybe there wasn’t one.

The path had started out barren, but was starting to gain vegetation as we made our way across it. Then again, they were mostly dead berry bushes still standing above the gravel, so maybe that wasn’t a good sign. We did have Gab’s backpack still filled three quarters up, so we were set for a couple days. Hopefully this world hadn’t programmed in mold and rot.

We’d stopped for another break, picking a spot near the water and a bunch of bushes. It must’ve been at least half a day since we started to walk, and Valérie of course had started complaining to Micheal. I’d chosen to lie down away from the water while the squabble kept on and on. To their credit, it was calmer than most times. They were both sitting down and no one was yelling.

“I’m just saying it sucks that we can’t tell the time anymore. It makes me antsy,” Valérie sighed, stretching her arms.

“We’ve already gone through the first level, right?” Micheal reassured her. “This should just be the same thing, then. No biggie.”

“I don’t need you to reassure me,” she snapped, then shook her head when his ears drooped. “Ugh. It’s not your fault. I don’t know if pointing out bad things’ll help in the long run but it feels cathartic now, you know?”

“It can,” he replied hesitantly. “Hey, how about a fire for this break? At least the cold will be dealt with for a minute.”

“Hell yeah,” Valérie answered, sitting down as he walked away.

Making herself a target.

“How ya doin’?” Chloe asked, landing next to me after a couple laps in the air. I didn’t know if she understood the notion of a break.

“I’m doing _great_ now,” I said. I started walking toward the shrubs we hadn’t checked out yet.

“Hey, wait! Micheal’s aiming for those,” Chloe warned, flying after me.

“Exactly,” I said, smirking.

We stopped next to a sizeable group of bushes, most of them dead, as were most of the ones on the dark gravel path. Micheal sent me a quizzical look.

“Get away from the bushes,” he said.

“We should,” Chloe added.

“Don’t you think you’ll get better with an incentive?” I asked. “You know, get better aim when you’re trying to not shoot anyone.”

“… Yeah?” he shrugged. “It could. Thanks?”

“And we’re within a ten-meter radius of your target,” I continued. “So we’re not gonna get hit.”

Micheal sighed before taking a deep breath. 

I heckled some more. “Grow a spine, God damn it.”

He’d gotten better at generating the Ember fast. Maybe it was a muscle memory thing. He straightened up and opened his mouth slightly, a faint glow coming from his throat. It built up until he spat it out with him still facing us. And then it went ninety degrees to the right and bonked Valérie right on her noggin. 

“Ow?” She shouted out of both pain and sheer confusion. Gab ran over to her with an Oran berry taken out of her bag. Wait, had she been here the whole time? Man, she was _quiet_. Valérie declined the offer and mouthed a “how” to Micheal.

“Sorry,” Micheal mumbled. He looked as dumbfounded as I felt fulfilled.

This was followed by a yelp, as he saw one of those eggs of darkness spawning next to him. It had just appeared inches away. The dark sphere was barely a bouncy ball’s size, being so small it wasn’t obvious it was supposed to be oval yet. Eggs of darkness? Dark spheres? Man, I had to think of a cooler name for them. I couldn’t even call them black holes because they looked way too solid.

Anyway, Micheal dodged it easily and took a few steps back. It wasn’t a new sight on the gravel path, but it was the first time one had shown up so close to us while taking a break. It was only natural to focus on it again in a casual setting.

“What are those anyway?” Micheal said,

“Non-lethal traps, maybe?” Gab suggested. “Lola was in one before, so they affect us.”

Chloe piped up, landing on the backpack and forcing Gab to sit down. “It could be an equivalent to stalling a turn while we’re not in something turn-based.”

“So yeah... a trap,” Gab shrugged.

_That’s the one!_

“ _Dark_ Traps!” I spoke _spooookily_ , to Valérie’s immediate glare. She never did like anything I said. So I doubled down. “All hail the Dark Trap!”

“Really?” She muttered.

“The Dark Trap is all-knowing. It makes it quiet and gives us a clear mind. Anyway, I can’t hear you, I’m already compiling our Ten Commandments in my head.”

“Jesus Christ.”

“Commandment one! No one shall chuck fire at anyone, _Micheal_.”

He was visibly embarrassed at that, looking away from the smouldering remains of the Ember. Kieran stood up.

“Come on, don’t single him out.”

“Fine. No one chuck fire, _Kieran_.”

Valérie’s groan was a bigger symptom of pain than what she’d expressed when getting hit in the head with a flaming hairball. “Why did we get stuck with you?”

If I was bipedal, I would’ve brought a hand to my heart and thrown the other in the air in a gesture of mock allegiance. I continued with a scythe flip (a worthy substitute). “No mortal man can disobey all Ten Commandments and live!”

“Fine. Tell us about them, o wise one,” Kieran demanded, gesturing with his stingers in a wide arc.

_Think of another one, think of another one, think of anothe—_

“... and no mortal woman can recite all ten at once. Lest she die,” I said.

Kieran sat down next to Micheal and started heckling me. “Your cult’s got to vary its punishments.”

This was not helping. I’d lost the high ground. I was now tasked with sharing the word of the Dark Trap, but nothing was coming to mind. Turned out there was a limit to my nonsense. My back leg shuffled awkwardly and knocked against a leafy branch. I looked in that direction on instinct and was faced with a plant I hadn’t seen here yet. Well, yes, it was yet another berry bush, but the fruit were triangular and spotted. I couldn’t tell the colour of it, of course, but they were a lot lighter than the shadowy leaves.

 _Oh, a distraction_.

“Kieran, what the hell are those berries?”

He definitely noticed what I was trying to do, rolling his eyes as best he could without pupils. It was shockingly effective. He flew over to me with a soft buzz from his wings, and didn’t seem too fazed by the bush of weird fruit.

“Oh, I know those” Kieran said. “Those are Pecha berries. They heal poison.”

As soon as he said that, I saw an opportunity to change the subject even more and I jumped in. “Ten bucks to whoever licks one of Kieran’s stingers.”

“Oh my god” was all Valérie said, but I could see her hiding a grin.

_Okay, that’s the one. Keep going._

“We have a cure right there!” I gestured to the berry bush. “We can test it!”

“You don’t even have ten bucks on you,” Kieran said.

“I will when we get back to the bus.” 

I would. I was going to buy a snack at the fort on that day, and I’d taken some loose change from around the house for the occasion.

“Uh, maybe we shouldn’t try to literally poison ourselves—” Gab’s reply was smart, upon looking back, but, as smart ideas often are, she was drowned out by stupidity.

“And what do I get for someone _licking_ me?” Kieran asked indignantly, his arm stingers thrown over his head.

Micheal came forward. “Ten bucks from me.”

There was sudden silence among the group, and I couldn’t blame them. Micheal had started to act all goody-goody somewhere in the first level. You know, the whole responsible shebang. Whenever something needed to be done, he was the one that had to be the buzzkill and bring it up. After maybe Gab, he was the least likely person I thought would go along with this. I grinned ear to scythe. Was it my birthday?

“Don’t you make promises you can’t keep, chief,” Kieran glared.

“I would do a pinkie promise, but neither of us have pinkies at the moment,” Micheal answered, before sighing. “Also, we’re in high school. Just take my word for it?”

“Yeah, sure.”

Valérie put her hands on her hips. “Is there anyone here who’s... less affected by poison? Do types play a part here?”

Gab’s face was buried in her paws, clearly ashamed of this entire conversation. I saw Chloe float down and pat her on the back, yet she was still intently listening in on everything.

Kieran answered Valérie. “Types don’t matter here. Steel and Poison can’t get poisoned except by one specific Pokémon line that’s not here right now.”

“Okay, yeah, I’ll do it,” Valérie announced, to chuckles all around. Except for Gab, again, but eh, who was counting her?

“We should add it up afterward,” I overheard Kieran whisper after she’d walked over to him. “You know, get get a huge fry platter and blizzards at the DQ across the street.”

“We gotta dip the fries in the blizzards,” Valérie whispered back.

“Well, yeah, duh.”

They both went for a high-five, but realized their near mistake right before hitting hand and stinger together. Kieran held his stinger up with some disdain.

“It’s for science,” went Micheal, the awkward-master.

Valérie stuck her tongue out, and... nothing much else. It was kind of anticlimactic, honestly. She didn’t turn purple or anything, but _again_ , I couldn’t tell. Meditite could be supposed to be purple already.

“... Was that it?” I asked.

“Yeah, it was,” Valérie shrugged. “You owe me ten dollars anyway.”

She got that out just before she collapsed.

“Oh God no,” Kieran gulped.

Valérie slumped to the ground, moaning and clutching her stomach. God, that was fast-acting.

Micheal broke the silence. “What are we doing? Someone grab a berry off the bush!”

“On it. Chill,” I said.

I shooed Chloe off a branch, knowing that I could handle it no problem. I bit down on a berry and pulled.

Pecha berries didn’t kid around. The fruit was hard enough that it was difficult to get a grip on it with my teeth. I got it off, tearing part of a branch and leaves with me. Whatever, Valérie’d just get one with a long stem. I brought it over to the Meditite who looked like she was going to throw up. Oh, the humanity.

Valérie grabbed the fruit and bit off a chunk of it, chewing through the very rough peel. She finally swallowed it after an eon, looking absolutely disgusted.

“That... that is _inedible_ ,” she said. 

“You feel better?” Chloe asked.

Valérie held the remainder of the Pecha berry up, then dropped it. She got up, still a bit dazed. “Yeah, I’m good.”

“Have an Oran,” Gab said, handing one over to her.

She gladly accepted, nearly swallowing it in one bite. Meanwhile, Kieran (with some disdain) was rinsing his stinger in the dark water. The lake had been calm for a while; rather than waves lapping the shore, there was a strong current that could pull anyone that fell in far away.

Kieran smiled, turning to Micheal. “You know that means that a poison status is absolutely over-powered here, right?”

“Huh,” Micheal responded. “So we should put you in the front in every battle, then?”

Kieran’s smile straight-up melted. I laughed at that, earning me yet another glare for my collection.

Valérie got up and dusted herself off. Come to think of it, falling on gravel must’ve hurt more than I’d realized. She groaned, but it was in her Valérie way, so she looked fine. Her nauseous expression turned into a confused squint as she looked to the horizon, past the berry bushes.

“... what is _that_?” She started. “Is that the sun?”

I didn’t even shoot out a remark about how stupid that phrase sounded when it was clearly the _moon_. I knew we were disoriented. 

A white orb had risen from behind the horizon, bringing along a halo of faint white light. It wasn’t strong enough to change the sky’s colour, but it made the sinuous gravel path clearer.

“It’s the moon,” Kieran said. What a genius.

It sure looked like our moon as far as the shape was concerned... but it was completely blank. It was a photoshopped white circle stapled onto the sky. Talk about something that didn’t get a finished rendering job. 

With everything in this world being realistic (barring everything Pokémon-related), that got unsettling even for me. For a brief moment, it made me wonder what else could be missing that we hadn’t noticed. 

_To what extent can we really be ourselves in a world that can’t spawn backdrops correctly?_

Then I buried that thought and made a joke about the dang moon.

“The giant sky pancake says it’s nighttime.”

“What?” Chloe chirped.

“The sky pancake. Cause we’re not calling that a moon.”

“I’ll concede,” Valérie added. “That’s some garbage moon.”

“The graphics people were on some serious crunch time,” I said.

“Well... is it really night or day?” Chloe asked, to Micheal’s immediate groan.

“Night. It’s night,” he quickly said. “We’re tired, the moon’s out, and _we’re tired_.”

For once, he was the first one to lay down on the ground, eyes already closed. It took a few moments of silence for him to turn his head upward and add something.

“Uh, I guess Kieran and I call last shift?” He proposed sheepishly. 

He sat up as everyone nodded, not looking any less tired whatsoever. Someone kicked the still lit Ember toward some dead shrub Valérie had torn up. Gab and Chloe volunteered for the first shift, and before I knew it, my head was resting on the gravel again.

* * *

My shift came way too early, as per usual. Whoever got the middle shift got screwed into taking two naps instead of a usable block of sleep. Most of the time, it had been Valérie and I who got stuck with it. Man, no wonder she’d been so cranky.

A guest had graced our lonely three hours, though. Gab had stayed up past her shift, studying the notes from the first level by the fire. I’d almost forgotten she’d been carrying them in her bag under all those berries. Hey, what could I say? My brain prioritized food, not answers. Even though we clearly needed the latter.

The notes didn’t look like much. The ones we hadn’t read in the first dungeon were clear, but most of the others ones had huge ink spills on them. Gab hadn’t laid them out on the gravel, choosing to flip through the pile a page at a time. It was a waste of suspense. Nothing legible had come up, other than a few infuriating smiley faces that were clearly this mysterious dungeon dude’s signature. I’d stopped looking at the pages past the halfway point. There was a sizeable stack but there might as well have been two pages.

Valérie was taking a nap in the corner. She’d tended to tucker out early at night, but it was still early for her. Whatever, we’d had a rough day... if it could count as one, what with the lack of natural light. 

I didn’t mind. Her taking a snooze meant that she wouldn’t argue my ear off tonight. Quiet had been good so far.

Gab looked like she was running on fumes. Any minute now, she would fall over and drop all the paper into the fire. As much as I would’ve liked to be a witness to that... I tried to keep her awake.

“Anything new?” I asked.

“What, other than the Absol and Emolga thing?” She shot out drowsily, stifling a yawn. “We have a perpetual night sky. That’s pretty new. And creepy. It’s creepy.”

“About the notes.”

“Oh, uh...” she replied while shaking out some tiredness. “Not all of it is writing. Some pages have drawings.”

“Are they any good?” I asked. As an artist with a Deviantart page which boasted over ten watchers, I needed to know.

“No,” she said, smiling. “Look at that one. I think it’s an Oran berry, and next to it, there’s _maybe_ a quartered one.”

I studied the page she handed me with utmost attention. For flaws. I needed to make fun of literally everything I could find. If I couldn’t make the most out of this, I would get so bored for the next couple hours.

I pondered through an extensive pause and submitted my reply. “Too bad the writing’s gone. We need an explanation as to why that guy can’t draw circles.”

She sighed. “Oh, no one can draw circles. He gets off that one. I’m more concerned with the tree next to it.”

“Just draw bigger broccoli, dude!” I exclaimed, then got shushed by Gab. I whispered next. “It’s so easy.”

“It’s _so_ easy,” she repeated.

She flipped to another page of what we had to assume was a farming guide. By the fire, dappled light danced around us and the notes. Gab yawned, scooting close to the backpack.

“Hey, it’s fun when you talk,” I said, nudging her with my paw. Her ears drooped and face fell into an expression of pure exasperation.

_... Guess she hears that a lot. Well, then._

“It’s fun when you _let_ me talk,” she replied, smirking.

We talked some more, but the conversation momentum had all but gone. Eventually, Gab put the notes back into the backpack and called it a night.

As for me, I hadn’t wanted to sleep much since landing in this level. I chocked it up to the Dark typing. Totes not because of those weird nightmares from last night. I didn’t get anything tonight, but I woke up feeling antsy. I shoved that down. What kind of a person lets some dream dictate their day?... Gab, probably. 

The Emolga was looking peaceful, for once. She leaned against the backpack as someone would with a pillow. The way she was curled up reminded me of Thermidor, my brother’s cat.

_On the list of things to do when you get back home: making a flying squirrel original character._

I couldn’t exactly draw here. For now all I could do was keep up the mental list. Whatever. This place was so insanely cool that I continuously added to my visual memory bank.

I turned away from the bonfire, gazing into the abyss of a lake before me. It really was pretty to look at, no matter what the others said. The sky had even more stars than the last level, and all were reflected in the water. Every so often, the waves would be in the perfect position for an illusion. For a split second, I really felt like I was in deep space. No ceiling or floor, just me and the vacuum.

Before I knew it, the moon was two thirds across the sky. In fact, it had passed that maybe an hour ago. The moon clock was a very rough estimate of actual time. I couldn’t be sure if it did cover eight hours. And if I couldn’t be sure, why bother waking anyone else up? I was awake and enjoying the scenery. Being here was the best.


	12. Part 3: Dark of the Night, Chapter 3 (Lola)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which close calls are had and water is breached.

The moon went down without me going back to sleep. Why did we pick the time where the sky was lit as the time to sleep? That would be a doozy to decondition when we’d escape this level if we spent enough time here. What if I just didn’t wake anyone else up until the moon rose up again? I suppressed the thought— and a yawn— and went to push my Pokémon classmates awake. I would’ve nodded off eventually while waiting. I needed some conversation to keep myself awake.

After some confusion over Kieran and Micheal expecting their now void watch shift, breakfast was in order. We’d stopped next to some bushes, so Kieran and Gab were at work getting berries into a pile. I must’ve spaced out, because the next thing I knew, everyone was already in a circle and having their share. I walked over and laid down next to Kieran.

“Pass me a PokéBerry,” I demanded.

“A _what_?” Kieran asked.

“You know. PokéBerries,” I pointed.

“No,” Kieran said, squinting in annoyance. “They’re just berries. They have specific names. Stop.”

“PokéRocks”, I said, nudging bits of gravel with my front paw.

“No.”

“Can you prove they’re not called that?”

“Well... not without my phone!” He groaned. “But I can _assure_ you there are mentions of regular rocks in Pokémon.”

“Oh, Graveler’s PokéDex entry says it looks like a rock!” Chloe said from the opposite side of the circle.

“Okay, so just rocks then. _PokéGround_ ,” I continued.

“Stop it.”

“PokéSky.”

“Screw you.”

Valérie chipped in, pointing at me. “PokéAbso— wait, that one doesn’t work.”

“ _Only_ that one?” Kieran exclaimed.

“Are you passing me an Oran berry or not?” I groaned.

He kicked one from his stash to me and I dug in. Not satisfied with just the one berry and not wanting to deal with Kieran again, I walked to the Oran bush and focused energy into my claws. With one swipe, I cut down a sizeable branch, bringing down... one more berry with it. 

_Huh. Maybe another branch has more—_

My train of thought was interrupted by Micheal, who’d walked to me, looking back and forth between the branch and myself.

He shook his head. “What are you doing?”

I shrugged. “Eh? Practice?” 

“We don’t know how many times you can do that. Save it for when we need it.”

I rolled my eyes and watched the Litleo round up our ragtag Pokémon team now that the berries were mostly gone. I ate mine. Time for more walking.

“Ready to go?” Micheal asked Gab.

“I think so”, she mumbled. “Let me see if I can do Flash again.”

The Emolga had been eating some small, round berries that she said were supposedly able to restore her move. Before she could start it up, though, her gaze wandered to the felled branch and she did a double take.

“Wait. Why don’t we just carry a torch?” She said, grabbing the branch. 

Everyone who could manage a facepalm did so.

“Yup,” Micheal laughed, face unobstructed and ears lowered. “ _Yup_ , we should’ve thought of that before, huh?”

* * *

Later, we had another water break. Gab was off checking out some berry bushes with Chloe, and the rest of us laid down against the gravel once again. I was getting sore from all of that exercise. The last level was all right; we’d passed a threshold somewhere in the cave where a certain amount of walking wasn’t so tiresome. Here, it seemed we were building to another threshold, and I just wanted it to be _over already_.

I tilted my head side to side, feeling the weight of my super cool scythe, practically playing with it like a kid with a loose tooth. Micheal was stretching next to me and he noticed.

“What is that anyway, a sickle?” He asked.

“It’s a _scythe_ ,” I corrected.

“What’s the difference?” 

“I, uh...” I stammered. He had me there. “Scythe is cooler.”

“If you only call it that because of the Grim Reaper, _I swear to God_...” Valérie groaned from her corner. She’d stayed facedown for the entirety of the break, holding the torch upright with a loose grip from her hand. Kieran sat next to her.

“Too edgy for ya?” I grinned, watching her bring entire planets to shame with the radius of her eye roll.

“We _are_ talking blades,” Micheal mumbled, to an immediate cackle from me.

The rest of the conversation remained as nonsensical, much to my delight. Eventually my attention fell on a small dark sphere spawning a couple meters away from us, right at the top of a slope leading to the water.

My tired eyes couldn’t focus on the texture of the Dark Trap. After all, even when I’d been well-rested, I couldn’t. If the garbage moon was a white circle pasted onto the sky, they were black spheres pasted inches above the ground. I kept squinting at the orb even though there was nothing to discern.

“It’s weird how they look like black holes up close,” I commented.

“Yeah?” Micheal asked absently.

“Well yeah, look.”

I pushed him toward the orb with a bat from my front paw. That sent him tripping and falling mere inches from the trap, face flat on the gravel. Whoops. He got up and turned back to face me.

“Hey!” He exclaimed. “I could see it from over there! Do you think I’m blind?”

As he kept that up, the Dark Trap expanded behind him. I motioned for him to get away, but the trap was deceptively fast. A theory I’d had while traveling was confirmed: the traps had the power to absorb Pokémon into it. The rough sand-like walls were set before the Litleo had a chance to jump away. The Dark Trap grew to its maximum size, having engulfed Micheal before dropping to the ground with the gravel audibly shuffling.

“Micheal!” Kieran yelled.

When there was no response, his eyes widened and he ran to the Dark Trap. He knocked on the surface to no response other than the gravel at the bottom of the trap being jostled.

“Oh, they’re pretty soundproof,” I called to him, recalling how I could only hear muffled voices when the trap had started to dissolve. “Wouldn’t want to break your stingers over something that won’t work.”

“What the hell, Lola?” He said, throwing his stingers over his head. “Why would you push him like that?”

“Uh, you weren’t worried when I was in one of those things.”

He squinted, trying to reach for a response. Honestly, I didn’t even want an apology. I was just tired and wanted to deescalate the situation.

Then the Dark Trap tipped over and started to slide down the shore. 

“Oh my God!” Kieran shrieked.

“Look, Valérie’s got it!” I said, and Kieran finally stopped.

It was true. The freakishly strong Pokémon had placed herself at the bottom of the Dark Trap pushing it to safety back to the shore. She’d done so way more quietly than I would’ve expected of her. Then again, while she’d had to get her feet into the murky water (which was a strong catalyst for complaints), it wasn’t like Micheal was in any actual danger. He was a fire lion but he wasn’t _made of fire_ , right?

Presumably hearing the commotion, Chloe and Gab rushed over from the berry bushes. The Emolga was heaving the backpack on her shoulders with the top flap swung open, and the Swablu was following behind, trying her darnedest to pick up the trail of fallen berries.

“What did we miss?” Gab gasped.

“We skipped a rock into the lake,” Valérie sighed. I chuckled at that. Someone was in a relaxed mood today.

Meanwhile, Gab gave me a horrified look the second she realized someone was missing. She barely deflated when seemingly connecting the dots, what with us surrounding the Dark Trap.

“This is...” Valérie started, “this is a bit heavy, isn’t it? What’s it made of, lead?”

And thus the Dark Trap remained only _halfway_ up the slope for the better part of five minutes. I didn’t talk during that time, my eyes fixated on the traps floating above the water hundreds of meters away from us. I knew some judgemental glares were directed my way, but it _wasn’t_ a big deal. I was allowed to think of other things.

A familiar eggshell-like sound reached my ears and I sighed. From the outside, the darkness simply dissolved, leaving no trace of itself. One of Micheal’s hind paws grazed the lake’s surface, making the water ripple and shimmer. He quickly retracted it when he realized. At that point, he was completely free. I walked over.

“Sweet, you’re not dead,” I said, patting him on the back. 

He jumped at the contact, but looked fine otherwise. He took a deep breath and got to his feet. Paws. Got to his paws.

Anyway, he walked away from me, heading up the coast. He only gave a tail swish as a signal to follow him.

Kieran flew up and landed next to him, whispering something and looking concerned. Micheal shook his head and already looked chipper.

“More fear than harm, really,” I overheard. “I’ve had worse time-outs when I was in kindergarten.”

“Ha!” Kieran laughed.

Valérie grunted next to me as she picked up the torch again. That thing had lasted ridiculously long. Was it heavy, though? Valérie certainly acted like it was, but wasn’t she the strong one of the group? 

_Whatever_. 

I followed the rest of the group, keeping myself some meters behind. 

* * *

It only took us half an hour of walking to find something interesting again. Deftly avoiding any further Dark Trap incidents, Micheal had been leading the charge. 

He’d just stopped, ears perked up in alert.

“There’s something in front of us,” he mumbled.

He looked back and gestured to me to come check it out. I lazily made my way to his position and focused my sight on a huddle of Dark Traps still a ways away from us. There, standing on top of one of them, stood a weird fox with glowing eyes. On its body were several rings that gave anyone enough light to discern it. Even from behind me, it seemed the others had started to examine the creature.

“Umbreon,” Kieran identified.

The name hung in the air as we quietly kept looking at our supposed foe from a distance. It hopped from one top of a Dark Trap to another. 

“Maybe it’s someone else?” Chloe suggested, hopping ahead.

“Woah, it’s got red eyes, though,” Micheal protested, in his usual mom-friend manner. “Are you sure about this?”

“Umbreon _usually_ have red eyes,” Kieran stated. “We can’t actually know whether or not it’s hostile until we go see it.” 

Red eyes? Since when were they red? Hadn’t this been in black and white for everyone else? 

“Hey!” I called to the Umbreon. Its ears twitched while the rest of it grew deathly still. I earned yet another set of glares. One person didn’t contribute, however. She looked onward with half-lidded eyes. Good god, why did she look so tired? She’d nearly slept the most!

“If it’s a boss, we’re gonna have to fight it anyway, right?” Valérie shrugged. “Let’s just get it over with.”

Good, someone agreed with my inability to shut up.

A roar rang through the path. It was a low, guttural sound. I saw bared fangs and the Umbreon now facing us.

I realized that near it were far more structures than Dark Traps. By squinting to the distance, I could see spires and tendrils lapping the shores and lashing through the air. As the Umbreon started walking toward us, new ones joined it like waves at every step. At least it looked like it. They were hard to discern. The Umbreon wasn’t.

Until the glowing rings flickered off.

“Everyone stay close!” Micheal yelled, post-gasp and fur on end.

Before I knew it, the scraping of paws on rock filled the air. It was getting close fast. Why couldn’t I see it? 

I’d spent the night not resting my eyes. Of course my night vision had gotten worse.

The sound got louder, black spikes tracing a running course. Did this thing control the Dark Traps? I couldn’t observe them for long. A wall of darkness stretched from the gravel to meters above us, crackling. It blocked the entire width of the path in front of us, still growing in height.

“Uh, what’s it doing? Blocking itself?” I mocked.

The wall grew in an arc, starting to circle us, passing through the water.

“When the traps are still growing, they’re one-way,” Chloe gulped, landing on my back. “It’s trapping us by not telling where the Umbreon is going to come from.”

I tensed, turning to tell her to get off. According to her words, we were already expecting one jumpscare. I didn’t need one from behind me. She’d attached herself to the back of my neck, though, so I couldn’t see her. I could only feel her tremble. This girl’s face must’ve looked way too scared for comfort. 

“Just stay happy, that’s your thing!” I snapped.

The Swablu flew off my back. I couldn’t see her face from my viewpoint but I hoped she was somewhat smiling. She went up until she passed the wall.

_Oh, of course she can go fly above the wall. Duh._

“Bring us back a frap,” I called.

Gab eyed me suspiciously and put her bag down. Good. Berry support was a-go. 

Micheal’s next order was cut off by the Umbreon finally crashing through the wall. Now that it was closer, it was more visible. Its still-glowing eyes were a dead giveaway. 

One cough later, an Ember was spat out onto the gravel and promptly dodged by the Umbreon, who avoided it like a cat with water.

“Uh, scatter!” Micheal’s suggestion rang out.

“ _What_?” Gab questioned.

She didn’t get an answer as we did indeed scatter, the Umbreon bolting after Micheal. As before, spikes jutted out of the gravel behind it, leaving a dangerous and sharp trail.

Was this an Umbreon thing or a Dark type thing? Judging by Kieran and Gab’s faces, it was something they clearly didn’t expect. Maybe it was a dungeon thing.

Once Micheal was out of range from the Umbreon, it started sending the spires in waves in our direction. Those, fortunately for us, either missed their mark or dissolved before covering the distance between us and the Umbreon. Spike after spike, failed hit after failed hit, it threw everything in its dark arsenal at us. Nothing landed, thankfully. 

_It needs to learn Dark Aim._

_Wait, that’s one of your worse ones. Where’s the joke, Lola_

_It needs to follow the word of the Dark Trap. There. Nailed it._

“Here’s Johnny!” Micheal shouted, pouncing on the fox and trying to bite it. He was shaken off like a cowboy at his first rodeo, roughly landing on the gravel. 

“Are we just going to stand there?” Kieran shouted. “He needs help!”

“Yeah, with picking better movie references,” I responded.

Kieran and Valérie groaned louder than the Umbreon growled. The Meditite clutched her torch and yelled out a war-cry as she started running. She made it to the beast and... slapped it in the face.

“Hell yeah!” I cheered.

While the Umbreon was obviously stunned by the oldest technique in a high school girl’s book, it was also very transfixed on Valérie’s torch. Something about it clearly made it anxious. Valérie picked up on that, waving the flaming branch around. The Umbreon slowly backed away, stepping toward Kieran, Gab and I. 

Micheal finally got up and started walking with Valérie, keeping a meter of space between her and himself. 

“Guys?” He called to us. “Stay where you are. We’re surrounding this thing.”

There was no discernible reaction from the Umbreon, which led me to believe boss Pokémon didn’t know words. Weird. 

“S-stay close, okay?” Gab whispered at my side, padding slightly behind me. The Emolga kept her backpack’s straps in her hands with a loose grip.

Kieran flew a couple feet away from us, keeping his stingers raised. It took Micheal and Valérie less than a minute to slowly bring it into a small circle.

Was this the first fight we had slightly under control? Wow, how long would this last? 

...Here’s the thing about surrounding a threat: it’s close to everyone involved. We didn’t know what it had in store at such a close range. 

Every time it saw one of us, it growled more and more. It getting slapped did not help the matter. I didn’t know how its vocal chords— or any bosses’, for that matter— were in use when the boss was always puking out pixels.

_God, what an angry puppy._

In a split second, a cylindrical wall was raised, reaching high above us and blocking the Umbreon from view. Must’ve been the same trick as before, only in reverse. With no way to tell who it would attack, we just tensed and exchanged looks.

“Guys? Where are you?” Chloe yelled from up above. Shoot, Swablu must not be very good nocturnal flyers. Did she even know the Umbreon had reached us yet?

“Hold on, I got you!” Kieran shouted back, flying up to her approximated position.

That was enough of a distraction for the Umbreon. I was tackled in the side, knocking me out of breath as I hit the gravel. I gasped and saw the Umbreon looming over, rings aglow once again. Those gray eyes made my blood run cold for a second.

_... they were red in the dream._

It roared again and I saw its teeth glow a stark white. The Umbreon reared its head up, taking an almost insultingly long time to attack me.

A bright glow whizzed by me, landing with a thump and a yelp. I almost didn’t recognize Gab without the backpack. The blinding Emolga stood with her arms stretched out in front of her, eyes closed and face in the middle of cringing. It was either from the panic or the Umbreon’s ensuing pained shriek.

“What are you doing?!” Micheal yelled from the side.

“Warding it off!” Gab choked out. “O-or making myself a target. I don’t know yet.”

“Distracting it is enough!” Came a voice from on high. 

With a swoop and a peck, Chloe had landed a hit. Sure, it was just a nick, but from my spot I saw a tiny clump of dark hair fall to the ground. Jaws clamped on air with an audible impact, Chloe having avoided the glowing fangs by an inch. 

All this couldn’t distract me from the fact that the Umbreon had been startled by a light being turned on. _That_ was what we were afraid of? The rest of the battle was going to be a piece of cake. I didn’t see what there was to be worried about anymore.

The Umbreon looked around itself for a second, before bolting off away from us. Kieran and Chloe landed moments later. 

“Status report?” Kieran asked.

“The dude’s afraid of light, I think,” I said. That was maybe the first serious thing I’d said today.

“Does this count as a win?” Chloe wondered. As there was no portal in sight, it was a unanimous no. It seemed the Umbreon would have to be chased and snuffed out.

“Let’s go, then,” Micheal commanded. 

“You coming, flashlight?” Valérie asked.

Gab looked seconds away from hyperventilating. She looked over to me, still a walking lightbulb. 

“Lola, grab the backpack for now!” She finally said.

And now I didn’t even have to fight the Umbreon? Awesome.

“Sure,” I said, biting down on a backpack strap and starting to drag it. 

The squad ran after the boss, Valérie trailing slightly behind them. I just walked, taking my sweet time. It seemed Valérie wanted to take a break too, though. As the rest of the group raced on, she suddenly stopped. She’d only ran a short distance, so even with my slow pace, I caught up with her. Didn’t seem like her to not chase after the monster, but today was obviously an off-day. 

Some meters away from her, I put the backpack down. 

“Hey, think fast!” I yelled. 

I kicked it toward her, thinking nothing of it.

I heard the clatter of wood on rock. The torch rolled out of view.

Valérie was laying on the ground, not far from the backpack. The top flap was open, some berries rolling down the shore into the water. 

“Oh no,” I gasped. 

I leapt to the berries’ rescue, pushing the backpack further away from the water with a kick. Most berries that had fallen out were already too far gone for me to reach. The only one still close was bobbing up and down the waves. I dove into the water, able to reach the lake floor but barely.

I bit into nothing, the Pecha berry dodging my attempt and floating deeper into the lake. The waves I made sloshed around me. I didn’t take their taunt and jumped after the berry.

Suddenly, there was no floor under me. I hadn’t realized I didn’t know how to swim as an Absol. My limbs struggled to keep up with instincts and whatever I would’ve had my human body do. Both inputs were incompatible. Leaving the lake wasn’t.

I clawed at the gravel as I turned back, fruitless. I coughed out water and felt heavy, and not just because of the weight of the water my fur absorbed. The walk back to safety was tense. I reached the backpack as the Meditite started crawling toward me.

Despite still being weak from the skirmish, Valérie grabbed my chest fur with an iron grip and pulled me toward her face. She was exhausted, her eyes glazed over and her skin beaded with sweat.

“You owe me at _least_ twenty-five bucks,” she rasped out, before her grasp weakened and she fainted.

“Heh,” I laughed nervously. I tried to give my signature grin, but I just couldn’t. 

She was still poisoned.

She’d figured it out faster than I did. We hadn’t beat any boss yet and one of our teammates was down.

It didn’t take long for the rest of the group to catch up. The Umbreon was nowhere to be seen, but no one looked happy enough for a victory to have happened. A draw, then, with the enemy still lurking in the shadows. I could still hear its gurgled cries somewhere far off.

“What’s going on?” Gab asked.

Her eyes went from me, to the tipped-over backpack, to Valérie collapsed on the gravel. Her ears lowered and she brought her hands to her mouth. I looked away, focusing on the rest of the group. 

“Commandment two: don’t kick the backpack for... kicks,” I answered with some nervous laughter.

The tension with the following silence was palpable.

“Really?!” Kieran exclaimed. “Now?”

He threw his stingers in the air and exchanged befuddled glances with everyone. A puddle had formed around my feet as drops of water fell from my fur. I was so cold.

Gab shuffled around in her bag and her face fell.

“There’s no Pecha berries left!” She gulped.

I barely registered that. I was too busy looking into the lake, searching for any trace of the one I’d missed. I felt questioning glances burrowing into the back of my head. They knew I’d let those go. And for once I’d tried.

“We need to get her to the Pecha bush,” Micheal declared.

With some help from all around, we managed to hoist Valérie onto my back, since I was basically the only one tall enough to carry someone. Gab also hopped on, holding Valérie in place as the whole group dashed to the bush.

The scenery whizzed by us, a mix of gray and black. The cries of the Umbreon, already faint when we’d left, had stopped echoing in the distance.

“How did this happen?” Micheal said. “She ate the berry, right?”

“I don’t know, I don’t know!” Kieran answered. “Maybe she did it wrong!”

We were at the bush now. I heard the exhausted huffing and panting all around me. The remains of the Pecha berry Valérie ate earlier were still near, and there were at least three more left on the bush.

“Maybe she did,” Chloe gasped.

Sure enough, the chunk that had come off from Valérie’s bite was from the bottom of the Pecha berry. Maybe it had been efficient only as a retardant since she’d eaten the peel. Micheal flexed his claws in hopes of slicing through to get to the fruit. Nothing got through. 

“Kieran, uh, skewer it open!” Micheal yelled. “We can tear away the peel from there!”

But Kieran just stared at his stingers fearfully.

“He might poison the berry,” Chloe stated.

“Lola, use Scratch, then!” Micheal pleaded. 

Gab’s grip on my neck tightened as I reared up, made my claws glow, and cut the thing open in three neat slices. The actual fruit was only in two of them, neither being the bottom one. Chloe’s theory was unfortunately right: we’d been way off.

Micheal bit the former centre of the berry, the peel thankfully falling off without effort, and brought it over to where Valérie was dropped off. From there, he put his paws together and used them to drop the berry in her mouth. She was able to chew.

Her shallow breathing slowed. She already looked fine.

“She’s doing better,” I heard Chloe say from an increasing distance away. 

Yep. I’d headed off into the dark.


	13. Part 3: Dark of the Night, Chapter 4 (Lola)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Are we having a conversation?
> 
> We are.

The sound of claws scraping on rock was all I heard for a while, at least until Gab recomposed herself enough to form words.

“Slow down!” she yelped. Her tone was shaky, but I wasn’t about to let someone’s motion sickness stop me.

“I just need water,” I muttered, not slowing down. A bitter taste stuck in the back of my mouth. My feet were moving on their own at this point, and I ignored the fact that there was water all around us. 

Darkness eventually fell, though, and I was forced to stop.

Gab let out a shriek at the sudden dark, causing me to jump in surprise. She fell off, and I felt my scythe scrape the ceiling. Man, was I getting tired of being the tall one. The scratching sound echoed against the walls. I knew we wouldn’t get in contact with the group until at least a couple minutes, and a part of me finally calmed down. I was only left with denial instead of sheer panic.

Gab was taking deep breaths, easily taking back control of herself. I heard a soft crackle of electricity as she started her Flash move and lit up the space. In terms of who I was trapped with, this could’ve been worse. Micheal would try and boss me around, Kieran or Chloe would be good jokesters but get grating really fast, and I was pretty sure Valérie straight-up hated me at this point. 

Anyway, Gab was a fair conversationalist when she was up against only one person. I’d gotten to see it... maybe twice? I opened my mouth for a conversation starter, and-

“Why do you do this?” Gab shot out first, interrupting me. I was going to make some snarky reply, but I looked at her and saw hurt in her face. I didn’t see that coming; she was an emotionless blob most of the time! Well, come to think of it, I’d mostly only seen her... nervous. Anything else she could feel, I was completely unprepared for.

“I, uh...”

“Do you like people getting hurt?” Her voice crackled with her Flash, both amplified by the isolation of the stone walls. Was that frustration? With her words, it must have been. “Do you want us all to die?”

She took a step backward after that, shoulders hunched, ears drooping, and paws fidgeting lightly. I was taken aback. Of course, I’d been laid back lately, making jokes and dares about everything, but... No, I most certainly did not want anyone to die! Who did she take me for?

“What? No—“

“Maybe act like it then!” She interrupted, again, throwing her arms over her head. All signs of anxiety had either vanished or were expertly hidden. It seemed that since she’d opened the can of worms, she’d decided to stick to it until everything spilled out. “You keep making reckless decisions and not taking anything seriously.”

“I’m sorry that my way of coping looks so terrible to you—“

“Maybe change that so it’ll at least look like you care!” She retorted.

“We’re stuck in an unknown place... a different planet? A different universe? A different whatever, and none of us are in the bodies we’re used to and supposed to be in! I don’t _want_ to care!” I yelled, instinctively baring my teeth. Gab looked startled, but stood her ground. Realizing what I’d done, I must’ve flinched more than her. She might’ve won this one.

I didn’t intend on phrasing my thoughts like that, but it summed up how I felt. I didn’t want to care. Huh. I did care, though, and the second I was reminded of that fact, everything came rushing back in.

I felt a tightness in my chest. I laid down on my side, taking in shaky breaths. I was fully aware of how dog-like the motion was, and now that I focused on it and was forced to feel... I hated it. Oh God, I hated it. I looked up to Gab, who was only slightly taller than my head resting on my front legs. She looked almost... pitying? 

“It doesn’t matter.”

“What?”

An edge grew to Gab’s voice. “It doesn’t matter that you don’t want to care. You have to—“

“I do not—“

“Oh, it doesn’t matter if you don’t feel it— even though you do,” she cut me off, tensions mounting. “I’m just saying you _need_ to.”

I crossed my front legs and squinted, letting her continue. She took a deep breath, stared deep into her paws and said:

“We’re all trapped here together, Lola. We can’t have a teammate always running headlong into problems.”

Her voice quaked and her light flickered, but she held on. “You treat it like we are in the Pokémon games or a dream, but this... this is real. We’re all stuck, and we all want to go back. We could all pretend this is nothing, but it isn’t! No one should be the one strong or fearless person here. All I’m saying is... we’re stronger and safer as a good group. We need you to be at your best. I need to be at _my_ best! As it is now, you’re actively screwing us over, and that won’t help anyone get back home.”

She took a breath. “And because you’re not willing to accept or give any help, we’re gonna need you to help yourself first.”

There was a moment of silence as her words sunk in. I stared at her the same way I would’ve a candle: squinting a bit, looking away, yet my eyes kept being drawn right back to the light source every time.

“You want me to... do what, then?”

“Maybe... start by not suggesting someone get poisoned for kicks? Stop shutting down anyone’s feelings? Including yours?” All her nervousness was back. She did hide it. Was it because of me? She sighed. “I’m sorry, I don’t know, I’m not a therapist.”

It seemed that if I didn’t kick her down, she would herself. Welp, time to try and care. I mustered a weak grin and chuckle.

“Could’ve fooled me.”

Her paw rubbed the back of her head nervously: “Trust me, the most I’ve done to learn about psychology is taking those online quizzes that tell you what disorder you have this week.”

I couldn’t hold back an unexpected snort at that, breaking the serious mood. I could’ve sworn I saw a tiny smirk grow on Gab’s lips. My eyes widened. Was that her plan? 

“There’s the exit,” she happily sighed.

... Or maybe she was just happy not having to deal with my problems for more than ten minutes. I must’ve went into over-analyzing overdrive when trying to decipher her. I wasn’t sure what was real. I guessed I would have to spend more time with her. We would probably have a lot of time to spare.

She started walking toward the opening, light slowly filtering in more and more as it grew larger. I got up, still feeling jittery. I needed to get something out before the rest of the group found us.

“Hey, Gab?”

She turned around to look at me.

“I’m sorry,” I said, words barely coming out above a whisper. I took a breath and stabilized. “Thanks for that.”

She smiled at me. It was a tired, yet grateful look- certainly more emotive than I’d seen her all year, even here... and that smile was directed at me!

She glanced away and brought her hands together, turning back to exit the cave.

* * *

The faint cries from the others echoed off as we followed their direction. Night was slowly crawling up on us, the blank moon overhead.

I’d just spotted movement ahead when I heard a rustle from the side. 

“Wait, is that—“ I started.

A growl from the same direction confirmed it. We’d found the Umbreon. And, surprise, surprise, it wasn’t happy to see us.

It sprang out of the water, and I narrowly avoided a tackle by jumping backwards. I saw the fox’s form in front of me. It was limping somewhat and one of its ears was twitching. The Umbreon faced me, in a determined yet shaky battle stance. 

Gab positioned herself on the opposite side, blocking the path behind the Umbreon. It wasn’t about to go back into the water, so it was completely cornered. This was Micheal’s strategy, take two. Only, this time, the Umbreon wouldn’t make walls before we could do anything. We’d had enough of that today.

Without warning, Gab rushed at the Umbreon in the blink of an eye. I barely even registered the blur she became in that split second. Was that the fabled Quick Attack? If so, it sure lived up to the name. She collided with the beast at full force, striking it in the chest. The Umbreon in turn toppled over and fell on its back, its yellow rings flickering somewhat. While it wasn’t down for the count, I took that as a sign of the tides turning in our favour.

Gab stopped running some meters past me, a dust cloud following her. An adrenaline-fuelled smile was plastered on her face. “It’s paralyzed! Quick, go for it!”

Sure enough, sparks were running through the Umbreon’s body, and whatever movements it did manage were either jolty or sluggish. I didn’t need much more invitation. With a final Scratch, I lunged and delivered the blow. It shrieked in a hoarse, ragged way, and dissolved into a million pixels that fell through the floor. 

We just stood there for a moment, adrenaline still not stopping the pump. Gab eventually dropped down onto her back and laughed hysterically.

“What?”

“I don’t know! We defeated this thing so easily _now_?” She laughed. “Also, it was way smaller than I expected.”

“Is it not that size normally?”

 _“I don’t know_?” She repeated. “Maybe that’s what I get for always carrying the berry bag in the back. He looked bigger when we were losing.”

As I looked around us, the absence of Dark Trap was instantly noticeable. All that was left was the gravel, and that deep space illusion the sky and water formed together. The water was still, in perfect balance.

In the distance, faint voices became louder. Our crew was getting closer. Behind me, a hum and a carrion bell sound were made, and I saw my shadow extend in front of me. The portal was open, its light bringing a welcome contrast to the scenery.

“What are we waiting for?” Gab asked, looking straight ahead. “Let’s get everyone!”

* * *

I’d say I was expecting a happy reunion, but the run felt like coming back home after sneaking out. Except this was worse, because I was disappointing my peers instead of an authority figure. 

The upside was that we beat up the Umbreon, so I could totally pretend that’s what we meant to do. Thank God Gab picked up on it.

“And then I used Quick Attack on it and hit it right in the chest!” The Emolga told our group as we were walking toward the portal. “Everything else went in slow motion, it was so cool.”

“Woah”, Chloe whispered, the Swablu’s eyes practically sparkling.

As Gab took a surprising lead in the peloton, I hung toward the back, holding the backpack with my teeth (properly, this time). Next to me, Valérie leaned on Kieran to walk but already looked better. She’d gotten as much colour back in her cheeks as I could tell.

“Sorry, by the way,” I mumbled.

“What?” Valérie said. “For knocking me out with a bag? Yeah, not cool.”

“... I guess for that,” I admitted, “and the Pecha berry thing.”

“ _I_ licked a poison stinger, dingus. I walked into that one.”

Uh... where was the Valérie we entered this universe with? Had the poison gotten to her brain? How else would she own up for one of her problems? _I’d_ never seen it happen. 

Kieran suddenly stopped. He squinted, turning to look over the water. “Hey, guys?” 

The group halted, and everyone got closer to him as he pointed a stinger in the direction he was looking toward. I managed to see what he noticed, but Micheal reacted first. There was a sharp gasp and a tail swish, then his gaze locked onto the portal as he tried to formulate a sentence.

“So those are back,” Valérie said. She’d taken her hand off Kieran’s arm and started to steady herself on her own.

“You don’t question the will of the Dark Trap,” I muttered, staring at the floating sphere over the water. “It lives on.”

Valérie rolled her eyes. Okay, she was back. That eye roll was a constant of the universe. Well, make that a multiverse constant since we probably weren’t on Earth anymore. Earth didn’t have menacing orbs of darkness that I could mold into a joke religion.

“Care to share the last eight Dark Trap Commandments?” Gab asked.

“Oh, don’t you forget about them. I’ll think up of more down the road.”

“I hope so.”

I put the berry backpack down. “Hey, you mind carrying it? It’s —bleh— it’s hard on my teeth.”

She chuckled and grabbed the straps. “I made it for me. It’s fine.”

When the team had met up, Gab and I had ran most of the distance between us and the rest. We were still a few minutes away from the portal, so the walk toward it made for some short conversations.

Finally, the portal stood in front of us. We stopped, and everyone just awkwardly shuffled in place. I wasn’t sure why we all stopped to look around after every fight. Maybe we did like how things looked when we knew the danger was over for a little while. Taking a breath was nice. Inside the portal, swirls of gray haze made their way through stark white. I supposed they could’ve been any colour. I couldn’t tell anymore, after all.

My heart sank, and it was a feeling I’d barely gotten to recover from since the Dark Trap. It didn’t matter much that I couldn’t see colour; I was more worried about constantly having that pit in my gut. Was I going to feel this all the time? Was this what it meant to face your emotions and not look away? What was the point in even trying if I was going to be a downer from now on?

 _Her smile made me_ happy _, though._

The thought came by surprise. It was true, though. Gab’s expression as we’d left the trap was something I hadn’t seen from her before. It hadn’t been awkward, or funny, or mean. It was just an earnest smile that I’d gotten to see by letting her in. Maybe I’d get to see everyone else’s eventually.

_Oh, dear God. Reel it back in, Lola. You’ve reached maximum cheese._

I looked over the scenery to distract myself. There was something moving in the distance, somewhere on a far section of the gravel path. I thought it was another Dark Trap at first, but... something about the shape was wrong. Something with a triangular head, extending its arms to either side like a scarecrow. Was it... moving? I lost it in the muddy grays.

“Hey, people?” I called. “Time to jump!”

“What?” Micheal asked, tail and ears suddenly up in alert. 

The rest of the gang looked just as confused.

“We’re going,” I said. “Come with me so I don’t get eaten by PokéSharks or something.”

With that, I jumped head first into the portal, welcoming the brightness surrounding me.

I understood why Gab had said what she’d said in the Dark Trap, but it was going to be hard. I couldn’t go through an entire personality change overnight (no matter how long that night was), but... I could try. Bit by bit, I could care. And I did.

I did, for her, for the rest of the group, and for me. We were all going home somehow, and I wasn’t going to sit idly by until it happened. Okay, well maybe I could still lie around when I was tired, but... from now on, only if everyone was all right with it.


End file.
